#indigo effortposts

[indigosfindings]

monty hall problem mods/house rules

the ultra monty hall problem: you are presented with three doors and told that one of them contains a car, the other two goats. after your initial choice the host reveals a fourth door & asks if you would like to switch your guess, but only to the fourth door. you are not given any hint as to whats behind the fourth door

monty hall scattershot: you are presented with three doors and are told that 10 cars & 10 goats are spread across them completely at random. after your initial guess the host opens the door you picked, then asks if you want to switch to another one

the discursive monty hall problem: exactly like the regular monty hall problem except each door has a 50/50 chance of having a goat or a car

the monty prison problem: you and a stranger in a separate room you cannot see, hear, or communicate with are each presented with three doors. if you and the stranger pick the same door, you both get a car: otherwise you both get a goat. after your initial pick the host will reveal a door that the stranger did not pick and ask if you want to switch your choice-- the stranger is being asked the same thing

the monty hall solution: three doors (1 car & 2 goats). after your initial choice the host opens the door you picked, revealing its contents, then asks if you want the contents or not. irrespective of whether you were correct he will say "are you sure" 5 times at minimum.

the monty corridor problem: the host presents you with three doors: two of them contain goats, and one leads to three further doors: of those doors, two contain slightly smaller goats, and one leads to three further doors. and so on

the monty hall problem unrated edition: as the regular monty hall problem, but if you dont change your initial choice, whatever prize you get is doubled

the monty hall consensus: you are one of twelve contestants being presented with three doors. one door has $120000, one has $60000, and the other has 120 litres of goat milk. all contestants who pick a given door will have its prize evenly split between them. three of the other contestants (you dont know which ones) have been told which doors contain which prizes. you are last in the picking order.

the monty trust problem: you are presented with three doors and told that one contains a car, the other two goats. after your initial pick the host says "oh, well that's wrong. door x is the one with the car." none of the doors are opened. you are asked if you want to switch

the monty twist problem: as "the monty trust problem", but you are also aware that one of the doors contains a cursed gem that will free the previous host and force you to become the new monty hall

hall of the monty king: the host presents you with 100 doors. 4 of them contain various ungulates, 1 contains a car, and 95 contain a ticket that allows you to pick another door.

the monty "hard mode" problem: after your initial guess all three doors will be opened. if your initial guess was incorrect, the car will be demolished on the spot. the host will then ask if you want to switch to the other goat

monty hall aim assist: as the monty hall problem, but if your initial guess was incorrect, the host will switch your choice to the correct door without asking permission

the monty hydra problem: as the monty hall problem, but if your initial guess is incorrect, two more doors are added to the group, & the car is reshuffled to a random door, then you have to guess again. this will be repeated for every incorrect guess. you keep going until you either find the car or give up

the monty hall tragedy: you are presented with three doors. all of them have a car behind them, but you dont know how to drive. youve always wanted a goat

the sleeping monty problem: theres a sleeping woman backstage. depending on whether you picked door 1, 2, or 3, she will be woken 1, 2, or 3 times, asked a question, then have her memories wiped & be put back to sleep. the question is: "which door did the contestant pick". you get one car times the number of times she answers correctly

the monty hall political cartoon: you are presented with three doors. instead of being numbered, the doors are labeled "deficit", "drugs", and "the voting public". whichever door you pick, the host will shake his head in disappointment

monty at 20000 halls: as the monty hall problem, but after your initial guess, the host opens a door that reveals a monster sabotaging the set. nobody believes you when you try to warn them

monty hall's temptation: the host presents you with three doors, each of which contain alluring & illustrious prizes. after your initial pick, monty hall will open all three doors and ask whether you want to keep your initial guess, switch to one of the others, or be permitted to wake up

[indigosfindings]

hey indigo. idk if youve been keeping tabs on the recent shit with patricia taxxon, but i was rewatching the gaylor video and it suddenly struck me how closely the bad-faith argumentative tactics described in the last third of that essay mirror the ways she’s being harassed currently. do you think there’s anything that can be done to get through to people who are starting from the conclusion that an individual is evil and looking for proof after the fact?

this is an old ask (sorry, i havent really been keeping up with asks the last couple months) but recent events have made this relevant

i have some familiarity with the harassment against patty from having been mutuals with her on here (my followers might remember how at the start of the year somebody sent me a callout ask urging me to denounce her). (readmore because this is going to be Long)

the comparison you posit here is pretty apt-- barkbarkbarkbarkarf also compared patricia's harassers to a conspiracy theory group. the tactics i laid out at the ~70 min mark of my video on gaylor can be seen in these harassers, but there are other similarities beyond (narrative-weaving, isolated self-propulsion of belief). having said that, i think there's a crucial difference in the form of the intent & outcome to which these strategies are put--this outcome can be revealed by considering a couple of the cardinal cases argued in the harassment against patricia.

the first of these points is that patricia taxxon is a corrupting--if not outright *contagious*--force to those around her. the asker i mentioned above was coming at me not even for interacting with patricia but for interacting with a person who interacts with patricia--as if to say that having *any* number of degrees of separation from her is sufficient to tarnish you. when i criticized that person, they accused me in replies of having been "groomed" by patty--as if to say that the only explanation for me saying "you are being transmisogynist to this trans woman" is that a woman whom ive only directly interacted with a small handful of times (& who afaik is multiple years younger than me) has sexually preyed upon me, such is the extent of her Evil.

the second point, while distinct, is in some ways an elaboration upon the first: that patricia taxxon is hyper-agentic. another piece of common ground with gaylor actually, although the valence is reversed. the notion that patricia has near-superhuman agency & control over the way people perceive her is reflected in the frequently repeated claim that she encodes Perverse Messages into even innocuous posts. when patricia's friend drew art of their fursonas hanging out, this was construed as sexual & pedophilic (even though deer has said repeatedly that theyre not interested in women!): patricia's Agentic Miasma is so powerful that Another Person's drawing has to be understood as orchestrated by her, & another person's interactions with her must be categorically Sexual & Perverse

the reason for these two points (& their concomitant tactics) becomes pretty clear when understood as an effort to isolate patty--"people close to patricia taxxon are either corrupted or puppeteered by her (& must therefore be subject to all the cruelty we can muster)." their strategy is to try to force people to disconnect themselves from her under the implicit threat of becoming subject to a similar harassment as what she's faced: in other words, the harassers attempt to present the choice of "support & further patricia's isolation" vs "be treated as untouchable by me & my friends" -- this is what i mean about what distinguishes this from something like gaylor: the narrative-building against patricia is actively done with the intent of harming her. actually, more than that, it is fueled by the desire to harm her-- it shores up the position that harming her is not only justifiable but necessary

to actually respond to your closing question -- whether there's a way to get through to people participating in this campaign: frankly, the prognosis is grim. the most vocal supporters of this harassment are certainly going to resist any attempt at being convinced-- if it comes to it, theyre going to make *active efforts* to not give up on their beliefs & actions. this is in part because to even engage in something like what has been done to patty (treating her like a social contagion, framing her as a Powerful Degenerate while sincerely believing yourself to be The More Progressive Person in the exchange), you have to force yourself to ignore what is material & what is reasonable.

there's also, as with gaylor, surely a factor of sunk cost: if you stop engaging in transmisogynist harassment, you have to face the fact that you did it in the first place. but imo there are three ways in which transmisogyny actually acts as a strengthening force in tandem with sunk cost to embolden commitment to this harassment: (1) the aggressive nature of the in-group encoding direct risk in the prospect of leaving, (2) tme people having a material investment in the suppression of trans women, & (3) the previous points synthesizing into a need for a thought-terminating party-line stance held together by its own surface tension. let me elaborate on each of these.

(1) if you exit the harassing group, you risk making yourself the next target of that group's aggression (the extent of which youll know firsthand from having participated in it!). one of the key tenets of the cruel & insular group is "those who are outside of our group will be the targets of our cruelty"-- can a person in this group even begin to consider leaving it? can it even enter consideration as a possibility?

(2) one of the prevailing theories of transmisogyny is that it specifically aims to keep trans women a marginalized & abjected class for the benefit of patriarchy (this post lays it out pretty succinctly)--further to this abjection, people fucking HATE it when a trans woman is successful or correct. isabel fall was torn down for writing a story proffering an intelligent, poetic, & incisive view on gender, trans woman athletes are met with moral panic, & patricia taxxon is characterized as some kind of embodiment of predation. in all cases, the threat of a trans woman being correct (or successful, or good at what she does, or even just "not suffering") makes various flavours of reactionaries feel threatened & scramble to protect the privileges of men, of cis people, and/or of tme people, & they thus have a vested interest in saying "she needs to be put in her place". transmisogyny, as a cultural force, allows this reaction to be not only acceptable but desirable.

(3) now consider also the specific things these harassers have been using to attack patricia--relitigating years-old arguments (incl trying to find reasons that patty being ~eccentric~ or missing an unreasonable, unspoken cue is actually Malicious And Evil), circular logic (patricia participating in kink is bad, because it Normalizes kink, which might make other people think kink is ok, which is bad, because kink is bad), even trying to take her to task for having acted out as a literal child... these "criticisms" have various throughlines, including: (i) patty must presently be "held accountable" for literally every event in her life, no matter how long ago (or how trivial), (ii) any complaint against patty by anyone (short of, like, overt terfs) must be legitimate, & (iii) just like you said: "Patricia Is Evil, And Always Has Been" must be presupposed, & assessments of her statements & actions must follow from that assumption. relatedly: a consistent feature of callout-style harassment in general (even in cases when the victims are not trans women) is that the target is not afforded a way out: apologies & retractions & clarifications (whether or not the target was ever even in the wrong in the first place) are dismissed as "hollow", "insincere", "backpedaling", "damage control", etc.

now, there's a pretty clear result here (resolve the contradiction: if a group of people decide to levy harassment (social, sexual, & otherwise), cruelty, malicious misinterpretation, & false accusations at a single person, & they claim that they are doing this for a reason, but there is absolutely nothing the target could do to mitigate that reason, what do you think the group's desired outcome is? 🤔🤔), but there's also a form of self-propulsion at play here imo. my theory is that continued cruelty can act as a defence for past cruelty: a hunt for reasons that prior mistreatment of patty was justified. "was i in the wrong? no, actually the other person is An Ontological Villain that cant meaningfully be harmed." remember that guy that wanted free labour from patricia, acted rudely toward her, & ultimately cut her from his project? his subsequent treatment of her (making innocuous anecdotes out to be malicious, framing her as The Exploiter in their dynamic, trying to convince people that she is some kind of predator) is consistent with a person who has wronged someone & now fumbles to justify it by claiming that that person is a categorical evil--a subrational, thought-terminating evil. & as mentioned above, trans women are a category of person that are considered acceptable targets for this kind of thing.

all the above is to say: while i am generally a believer in the ability of people to change, learn, unlearn, atone, etc, the single-issue commitment these people have is something that, under current conditions, they are not going to permit to be challenged. to return to the question in more practical terms, i think (1) trying to convince or reason with one of these people is more trouble than it's worth, & (2) as with a sizeable portion of online debate, if you are going to engage with them, you are better off doing so not with the aim of convincing your opponent but rather for the benefit of observers--to convince people on the fence, to fortify less-aware allies' understanding of the situation, & to demonstrate in concrete terms why & how the harassers are both wrong & malicious.

[indigosfindings]

ive really been enjoying doorjokes. i find the repeated dissolution of the knock knock joke into, like, a literal dialogue happening at a door really gripping. it's a strong exercise in maiming the rules of a scripted interaction: a knock knock joke where one participant just refuses to participate, or they react to a scripted question with dissonant earnestness, or the joke just bleeds into an unrelated statement that starts with the same words. the joke forgets it's a joke and melts into a navigation of a social scene, but that scene is shaped by the frame of the joke. it somehow consistently feels fresh & unpredictable, and it draws attention to the granular processes through which speech transmits concepts, and the contextual logic behind the function of words, and what it means for communication to decay. the terms & components & names that recur across posts give form & texture to the implicit space of the posts' subject, like as though you are watching a discursive organism being cut and reassembled piece after piece.

on the most visceral affective level: i think two of the strongest tools available to Posting are like, the power to disintegrate & rearrange words & syntax in that way that fosters this poetic, synesthetic environment, and the capacity for outlining like, a tiny fraction of a "world" that has an implicit but invisible set of logics too elusive to grasp. "can we come in and make some jokes about the mouth opening mood?"

[indigosfindings]

there are a lot of aspects of the general narrative(s) of the wii u's failure that ive found kind of strange for a while now, but the strangest imo is the claim that goes something to the effect of "(a sizeable portion of) the wii u's failure is owed to the fact that many prospective consumers Didnt Understand That It Was A Console (as opposed to an add-on for the wii or a special edition of it)"

like that argument has been tossed around repeatedly over the years, & i do not think that it is being used in most cases as a shorthand for a stronger argument, i think people are saying "the wii u failed because nobody knew it was a different console" & they mean exactly that. tbh it's just hardly even a coherent observation. afaict it seems to be rooted in (1) the response to the initial reveal trailer, which left viewers confused re what it was (like ok, if thats your argument then please demonstrate how/why a trailer from summer 2011 dictated a market reality from late 2012 through early 2017) and/or (2) that article from a former electronics store employee recounting personal anecdotes of like, parents not knowing the difference between wii games & wii u ones. like ok, that latter one is good evidence, assuming it is an accurate report of a phenomenon that was not isolated. now: is there proof that this was a widespread misconception? why were people who had this misconception still not buying the wii u after having the misunderstanding cleared up? if you feel this directly causally relates to the console's poor sales, how do you reconcile that with the fact that the 3ds was a much more successful console while also having a spate of people (including owners) not knowing that it was not just An Edition of the ds? how does this theory account for the massive success of the switch (a success probably not determined by The People Who Dont Know Which Console Is Which)?

like it is about 20% of the way to a more salient observation--"the wii u, in both development & marketing, was trying to coast off of the success of the wii (a success which was increasingly irreplicable in light of the broader tech situation), & in doing so alienated both the ultra-casual wii audience (which was never convinced that the wii u could offer something that the wii they already owned could not) & the general gaming audience (which was simply never appealed to)"--but reducing all of that into "the wii u failed because nobody could tell what it was" is. well it's a very convenient little soundbite in its parable-style simplicity, but it's just a really weak & assailable argument, & one that does not take into account the other realities of the wii u's situation (third parties jumping ship, the lack of a killer exclusive, the weakness of creative strength in many of the exclusives, how the early-stage appeals to the strength of the hardware looked in practice, the general cross-industry plummeting of emphasis on console identity at that time, etc)

[indigosfindings]

i havent really come back to the like "satisfaction brought it back" etc stuff much (my attitude is that like, i said my piece pretty comprehensively around 3 years ago & my opinion on the subject hasnt really changed in that time) but like. there really is something interesting going on there right? like from the foundation of the heuristic a really strange perspective on, like, The Function Of Words is revealed. like the contention of "full version" claims is essentially that You Have Been Lied To, that a True & Worthwhile & Radical & Liberatory concept has been suffocated & hidden from you so that a detrimental concept could take root instead, & that the battleground for this War Over Your Mind & Morals is... popular adages.

take as an example: "the early bird gets the worm" / "but the second mouse gets the cheese". these are clauses with a pretty straightforward illustrative utility: person 1 might say "the early bird gets the worm" to convey something like "i think it's best to do this thing asap," & person 2 might reply "...but the second mouse gets the cheese" to convey "i disagree--i think caution is more important than haste here." implicitly both people should understand what they are referring to (person 1 might be voicing their opinion on sleep schedules, project management, important purchases...) because these idioms arent actually a conduit into fundamental truths of the universe: theyre recognizable shorthands symbolizing a pertinent thought! but the alleged "full version" has no use in that context: "the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese" is contradictory! there's extremely limited utility in an adage that's, like, arguing with itself lmao. in fact, neither of the clauses is universally transferable to every single situation! when you use an idiom, youre not consulting it to decide what you believe--youre using it to *express* what you believe. & that leads into the mistake that the "full versions" truthers make: theyre assuming of language a kind of power that disregards its actual utility

the often commented-on contradiction between "many hands make light work" & "too many cooks spoil the broth" doesnt tell us that these are two fundamental codes of reality whose mutual opposition hints at A Glitch In The Matrix--it tells us that these are two different phrases that have utility in two different contexts to communicate two different ideas, & that neither *needs* to be applicable to every context, any more than the existence of the term "book club" would imply that every gathering on earth is a book club.

like radically (from the roots!) to say "the full version of the phrase was cut down so that people would not be free thinkers" is to say "altering a phrase will alter the ideas beneath the phrase", which is to assume that axioms are speaking a truth or concept into existence: implanting values in your mind rather than representing ideas out of your mind--implying a certain responsibility toward justice, veracity, ethics, etc, & a correlary danger (cognitohazard?) if that responsibility is not met. itd be like saying that a mnemonic like "ROY G BIV" dictates the order of the colour spectrum. it's a strange & immaterial way to conceptualize language--in fact, it's probably that same immateriality that allows the conspiracy-theory conclusion that ~they~ have made a concerted effort to suppress these phrases.

[indigosfindings]

some messy notes in terms of things that felt ambiently Strange about dashcon 2

very interesting to see an event where the vast majority of attendees are people with enough personal investment in that event to have bought tickets in their first ~30 minutes of availability. there was an air of likeminded enthusiasm that is. extremely rare to witness

i have a needling suspicion that something interesting can be revealed by the things that are or arent acknowledged in the uhh ritual of memory. for one, there was a kind of mingling of "then & now", like a lot of vendors in the artist alley were selling like tumblr meme-related stuff (sexyman pins, muppet joker prints, gandalf big naturals, oncest) but there was also a strong presence of like fairly topical fandom merch (jjk, bg3, ofmd, hazbin, etc) which gave the impression of like. "a normal con with something else creeping in at the margins". --and more to the point, i felt there were conspicuous absences in the reproduction of like the Artifacts of early-to-mid-10s tumblr fandom. there were at least ~30 homestuck cosplayers (i happened to witness the meetup lol) but maybe 2 of them were vriska? some doctor who & steven's universe but fairly little supernatural. & in neither cosplay nor merch was there any presence of hetalia! i think maybe an event like this kind of sifts out the things that people actually maintain nostalgia for--the things that can be affectionately called "an embarrassing memory" versus the things that are collectively considered *actually* too embarrassing to acknowledge

it was hosted in the japanese-canadian cultural centre & occupied maybe a quarter of the space in the building? which was otherwise just undergoing its normal operations. there was like an archery event that day so there was a bunch of people walking around nearby with like longbows & hakama & whatnot

it was. a decently organized event. that was paying tribute to a badly organized event. there were areas where dashcon 2 felt kind of unintentionally slapdash (eg occasional handwritten signs, a few of the volunteers(?) seeming occasionally unclear on instructions/procedures) but on the whole it was no more disorganized than youd expect any independent fan convention to be. which gives a distinct feeling to the areas where the like aesthetics of Failure were deliberately adopted

in general there was a sort of nebulous margin between earnest & ironic. like there was a kind of general embrace of The Haphazard that felt characteristically Tumblr--the kind of frenetic, cultivated disorganization (or maybe even revelry in "amateurishness") that is sort of deployed as an aesthetic label for the sake of, like, pursuing a certain legibility of identity ("gay disaster" & whatnot) which i think was reflected in the under-scripted speeches & the messy sexyman shrine & the shaky dance routines & so on. like there's maybe a kind of self-styled scrappiness or like a can-do "underdog" sensibility on display--as if to say: "hey, we're all Just A Little Guy, right? but look at us pulling together to Get It Done!" or some such. of course the same could be said of, say, original dashcon's donation bag fiasco. which makes me wonder.

the ballpit kind of exemplifies the last 2 points. like the original dashcon ballpit was (a) the principal summary of its Failure, but also (b) something that attendees at the time seemed to report with genuine enthusiasm & enjoyment? but at dashcon 2 the ballpit (again a kiddy pool!) was A Celebrated Item. like it's not A Ballpit, it's The Dashcon Ballpit. again, more than anything it's a photo op + the right to say "i was in the dashcon 2 ballpit". the original ballpit's ignominy is fed back into a sort of reverence. "thing intended to be ugly, in honour of thing that was unintentionally ugly." it's a meme being passed through the same manner of digestion as like, a Fandom--hence people cosplaying as the ballpit. the whole thing was essentially a convention about itself. a convention dedicated to the concept of its own existence. strange !

[indigosfindings]

things commenters on that blog commonly use to argue that a character eats pussy:

explicitly textually depicted eating pussy

bisexual(??)

is a good/selfless/generous person

respects women

is horny/promiscuous

their love interest likes them

their love interest is attractive, implying they have done something to "earn"/"deserve" them

their love interest resents them but doesnt break up with them, implying they are sexually competent

they have multiple children, implying they are sexually competent(??????)

attractive

they have a prominent nose/chin

they are a cannibal, so technically.....

"just look at them"

things people commonly use to argue a character Doesnt eat pussy:

asexual

repressed/catholic guilt/etc

they are a pillow princess/their partner is a stone top

[bioessentialism]

selfish

bad person

doesnt respect women

annoying

ugly

"just look at them"

[indigosfindings]

chilling adventures of sabrina season 1

straightforwardly terrible. worse than riverdale in every respect. that it got a second season at all beggars belief

i really like that the title sequence is 2000 hours long & also quite bad

why is this show so uninterested in witches & witchcraft. i expect it to be leading with like, how magic interacts with sabrina's life--casting spells to tie her shoelaces & such--but instead the opening beats are like, sabrina talking about how she's a witch & experiences Witch Problems, then instead of showing that she just. goes to a movie. she goes to a cafe. she goes to school. like seriously the magic comes up so infrequently & there is never any visual or narrative substance or emphasis. sabrina doesnt even get to Witch School until like 4 episodes in. they describe the school as containing like, infinite rooms modeled after Sacred Geometry or whatever, but that's basically just a mumbled tidbit, there's no illustration of this, no chase scene or "wrong turn" plotline taking advantage of the concept. even something as dull as doctor strange at least knows how to indulge a little in the visuals. like i cant overstate how much this show does not care about magic. the witch world feels so small & pithy, no sense of wonder or fascination. it's all perfunctory, it feels like watching a filing cabinet. it's written & plotted & shot as if the budget was literal pocket change

the visual emptiness extends beyond magic. in conversations characters just stand still, arms at their side, talking vaguely in the direction of one another

deeeeep in the shadow of supernatural. the red angel shit in the midseason finale hints at a kind of episodic monster-of-the-week adventure structure that this show just does not have

the first foot forward is sabrina talking about the difference between Fast Zombies & Slow Zombies, and this is positioned as like, really niche in-depth information signaling her as a Real Horror Afficionado

it's sort of maddening that hilda & zelda's entire appearances & personalities are completely 100% swapped from what they are in the comics. was there like a typo somewhere on the way or what

the aunts are probably the strongest characters. zelda (hilda?) as A Bree Van De Kamp is fun, she's honestly better than the show around her. hilda (zelda?)'s loneliness/romance subplot was sweet & compelling (until of course it ended up being corked unceremoniously)

the visual haze throughout all of part 1 is too much. sort out your focal length immediately

the colour grading!!! girl get some contrast NOW

they want to have character subplots like riverdale, but it's also overwhelmingly clear that the show only cares about one character

there are substantial gestures toward the idea that this series is (or involves) Horror (the music cues, all the allusions to horror movies (recreating johnny depp's outfit from a nightmare on elm street?!), the title...). & well, not only are the "horror" elements scattershot, sporadic, & routinely fumbled, 90% of the time it's only done to characters deemed to "deserve" it: tedious, unscary, puerile, etc

qua horror: i liked the scene where lilith's stupid fucking jason voorhees homunculus attacks sabrina in the bathtub (a solid, tense scene which lasts, like, a few seconds) & the sequence where zelda (hilda) sends a live mouse through a meat grinder (quite gruesome, although it being A Mouse is itself a punch-pull)

"the heroes got back at these bullies by tricking them into being gay! isnt that awesome??"

the scene where sabrina puts the black bully character in her place by threatening her with hanging is. well. i dont think the optics were considered

when i was a kid i always thought hilda & zelda were supposed to be like, gay. i thought they were a couple. this show missed such a strong opportunity. if you insist on making them siblings then make them ianthe & corona or die

im obsessed with the anti-pope plotline where sabrina rushes to present him her doctrine of Misogyny Is Bad before faustus can present his doctrine of Misogyny Is Good. obsessed with the idea that the anti-pope is just on the fence between these two positions & will be instantly swayed to whichever one he hears first

this series is so Fake Woke. it wants desperately to Be About Misogyny but has absolutely nothing to say about misogyny, just a bunch of really shallow soapboxes. every episode an EvilGuy will say "women should not have rights" then a woman will arch one eyebrow & say "ohoho...... men are so foolish... they always seem to forget that girls rule..... & boys drool.."

related: the show constantly wants to have its cake. punch-pulling is pretty much nonstop. sabrina keeps making choices that are described as monstrously scandalous, reputation-shattering, life-ruining, & potentially dangerous, & there is just never any laating consequence or fallout. she always says "i want to have it both ways" & then she just. does. she signs contracts then breaks them & nobody cares. witches are sworn to secrecy, but they all reveal themselves to mortals without issue

similarly: the Witch Church is both supposed to represent a libertine sensibility wrt romance & polyamory while also depicting multiple characters extremely concerned with spousal fidelity & primogeniture. it's both a(n excruciatingly unsubtle) 1:1 stand-in for everyday irl patriarchy & a liberatory alternative that allows the yoke of patriarchy to be shaken off. incoherent to say the least

it's all tell, no show. grand gestures about sabrina being The Ultimate Super Cool Witch Who Will Tear Down The Walls, but she never like. does anything. all her Coolness comes from her parentage.

elaborating on that: this show is first & foremost about Discussing power & coolness & conflict. they posture about the fights they will have, then they dont fight. they discuss the rules they will break, then they either dont break the rules or dont face consequences. they describe all this powerful & exciting magic that theyre not using. all these conflicts & struggles & fights just never start & never end

theo's entire plot thread is. terrible. he has no wants, interests, conflicts, plot beats, or topics of conversation outside of being trans. the what-if segment where he uses Evil Magic Transition which causes his body to Become Mutilated was deeply mean-spirited

roz's blindness plot is also terrible. the prospect of being transferred to a school with disability accommodations is presented as if it's like, tantamount to killing her

they really really really want harvey's dad to be both blue-collar & bourgeois.

i like prudence's voice

noticing that both this show & riverdale are constantly circumspect about bisexuality. it's always like, rhetoric & metaphor & oddly pointed talking-around, a similar sort of flighty, evasive register that they use for discussing race. i can accept moose not using the word "bisexual" because he's portrayed as repressive & ignorant, but i dont buy it for any of the others

noticing also that in both shows black characters only seem to enter relationships on rebounds

sabrina being Evil Jesus is soooooooooooo stuuuupiiiiiiiiiiiiiid. cant we just have a plot where sabrina tries to help harvey with his homework & accidentally turns it into an Algebra Goblin & then everyone has to deal with the Algebra Goblin

the "feast of feasts" episode was probably the strongest. the sequence of sabrina showing prudence around the high school actually got a couple of laughs out of me. the extended debating about the virtue of suicide qua ceremony was the closest this show's ever gotten to strong characterization. the cop-out conclusion was the exact sort of abject cowardice the series has displayed at pretty much every opportunity

the needledrops are so funny. every song is just like "i am a witch. i cast spells. i will ensorcel you with my Techniques"

ok you want to have a psychic power that's a knockoff of the shining. thats ok youre allowed to do that. but you cant--no look at me. look me in the eyes. you cannot call it The Cunning. look at me. you cannot keep saying The Cunning. you cant do that.

here's what it comes to: for all its flaws riverdale has never bored me. it has never felt like dragging my feet or made me say "i wish i wasnt watching this"