#he is so deep in the sunk cost fallacy that he would rather die a martyr than face the reality of what he's done

[anistarrose]

[Image description: screenshot from The Owl House of King saying: "No one wants to think they've wasted their life following the wrong person." End description.]

The thing about rewatching Hollow Mind, after the finale, is realizing this sentiment isn't just about Belos's followers, or about Luz initially looking up to Philip. In fact, it's just as much about Belos himself.

No one wants to admit you spent years chasing a brother who didn't want to go home. Who wasn't the witch hunter he once claimed to be. Who, in every reincarnation, still won't become the person you wanted him to be.

No one wants to admit that — for the centuries you saw yourself as following your God, doing what He required of you to save humanity's souls, and wipe out the Devil's witchcraft — that you were the only one doing evil. That your devout faith and countless sacrifices were misplaced, and that your former home has moved on from witch hunts anyway.

No one would want to admit any of that, and in combination with Belos's personal obsession with being a hero, it becomes clear he was never going to admit it. Not even on his deathbed. Because that would be nearly four hundred wasted years on his conscience, four hundred years of following the wrong people, and how could he possibly let himself believe that?

#the owl house #toh spoilers #emperor belos #philip wittebane #toh meta #caleb wittebane #this is one of several reasons why complaints about the finale like #“but belos should've realized he was wrong and died regretting his actions!” #don't really hold water to me #he is a foil to caleb and hunter and lilith and luz and literally everyone who undergoes positive character development #he is so deep in the sunk cost fallacy that he would rather die a martyr than face the reality of what he's done #and that's also why his end was so... what some people call anticlimactic but what i prefer to just call pathetic #they're not giving him a dramatic martyrdom sequence. they're just letting the rain do most of the work and smearing him out a little

[warsofasoiaf]

I think you may have sweltered this but I didn't find it when I did a search. Do you have anything to say on some of the loyalist primarch flaws and how they balance/balanced eachother out?

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it. All of the Primarchs are flawed in their own way, except for Vulkan because he is a massive bro. Sure he went insane, but that’s not his fault that Konrad Curze tortured him and he was a functional immortal.

Lion El’Jonson was arrogant even for a Primarch, and his inability to understand people left him vulnerable to intrigue and isolation. Jonson’s arrogance meant that he felt he wasn’t really accountable to others, hence why he could break his promise to Guilliman not to engage in an orbital bombardment. This same idea is the reason why so many find him suspicious and doubt his loyalty, even when he states that loyalty is its own reward and he doesn’t need to be recognized for the deed. However, this loyalty does ground him, as we see when he fights Curze.

Jaghatai Khan also had much of this isolation, and this made it hard to work with the Scars in a coalition environment. His own pride in himself meant that he never bothered to take the effort to work with others, insisting instead that others would have to make the first move. As such, no one knew what was going on inside his head. What tempered him was his love of Chogoris and his people and his marked dislike of dishonesty. While the Big E was fairly guilty of lying to his kids multiple times, Chaos was much worse. His commitment to freedom was both a flaw and a boon. It made it hard for him and his legion to fit in to the greater Imperium or in the eventual transition to peacetime, but he wasn’t going to stand for Mortarion’s plan to corral all psykers as we see in his epic takedown of the Plague Lord on Prospero.

Leman Russ’s flaws are pretty self-evident. Brash and abrasive, he started fights with his fellow Primarchs all the time. His unquestioning sense of loyalty meant that the Emperor used him for the unsavory jobs, and as he later notes, it won him few friends and left him susceptible to Horus’s manipulation that cost the Emperor the Thousand Sons. Now, Russ’s mistrust of psykers definitely played into this, and that’s on him, but he’s tempered himself now, both in transforming the Space Wolves and in focusing more upon recklessness with psykers, not with the actual psychic powers themselves, ridding himself of his bigotry somewhat.

Rogal Dorn is my main man, but even he is quite flawed. His biggest flaw is the whole “torture himself to enlightenment with the pain glove,” and that was reflected in the Iron Cage incident, where his desire for redemption to him meant suffering through immense pain, but ended up pointlessly crippling the Imperial Fists. This is completely reckless, as a general, he had a duty to his subordinates, and while sure, Perturabo needed to be brought to justice, I can’t really justify that Iron Cage incident as anything other than an attempt to purge himself of his perceived failure. Also, his honesty is great for defense but makes for terrible diplomacy, and as a general, diplomacy is a key part of his portfolio. What grounded him was his recognition of his own failings, and his ironclad desire to help the Imperium.

Sanguinius’s problem was DON’T YOU TALK SHIT ABOUT MY FABULOUS FUCKING HAWK BOY! his martyr complex, as we see at Signus Prime, where he attempted to sacrifice himself to Chaos to cure his Blood Angels of the Red Thirst, which as we see with Magnus and the Flesh-Change, a Chaotic bargain never gives you a permanent solution. While demanding much of yourself is noble, sacrifice sometimes is a waste; you have to make sure that your loss is offset by what you seek to gain. While Sanguinius was aware of visions of his own death, he never faltered. That is in itself a virtue, to not fear death, but he should strive His compassion was both a virtue and a flaw, as few people would try to redeem Konrad Curze and Horus himself. Unfortunately, that compassion and his drive to die for the glory of the Imperium got him killed, instead of waiting for Dorn or his father.

Ferrus Manus was brutal and too focused on purging himself of weakness. This meant that Ferrus was often brutal on his conquests and when Fulgrim attempted to convert him to the side of Chaos, Ferrus was so driven to prove that he wasn’t so weak as to be corrupted that he took unnecessary risks. His logic was baffling: since if Fulgrim believed he could tempt him, his brothers and the Emperor would suspect him, forgetting that Fulgrim was…I dunno, his best friend and so that friendship might have been a factor, or that in refusing, Ferrus proved his loyalty to Mankind. This ideology was so destructive that he sought out Fulgrim to ‘atone’ despite being surrounded, and it led to his death.

Roboute Guilliman is convinced of his own rightness that he can’t see where he makes mistakes. He almost tore the Imperium in half after the fall of the Emperor with the Codex Astartes, and he was so convinced that Terra had fallen that rather than investigate, he created Imperium Secundus. His self-righteousness can lead to sunk cost fallacy or not changing his plans if his initial ideas are not working (looking at you Unnumbered Sons), as well as people who don’t conform to his ideas being shunned out of the states he builds. His rigidity can cause problems both in diplomacy and in war. What tempers him is that he truly does care for the states he crafts and he wants to do right by them. 

Corvus Corax’s flaws, like others, are isolation, but also in an inability to communicate. This meant that when Corvus was put up against a wall against the charismatic Horus, he couldn’t stand his ground, and thus a lot of Raven Guard suffered as a result. Corax also wasn’t on his guard with regard to the Alpha Legion, and thus his plan to save his legion was sabotaged, and this brought him into a deep depression. His isolation left him to suffer alone until he went into the Eye of Terror, and deprive the Imperium of a significant asset. His infiltration tactics were incredibly useful, and his drive against tyranny could have arrested the Imperium’s slow decline, but alas, he was unable to pull himself from the brink by himself. What tempered him though, was his commitment to freedom and individual dignity.

As you can see, all of these Primarch had their flaws, but their grounding kept them from slipping. Corvus never embraced his anti-tyranny zeal to become Konrad Curze, The Lion never succumbed to resentment over being snubbed the way Perturabo did, and Ferrus’s drive for perfection didn’t lead to excessive vanity like Fulgrim. They definitely made mistakes both by themselves and to each other, but ultimately, they stood up for Mankind rather than falling into the traps of pride and ego that Chaos laid for them. Even Magnus, whose fall was so tragic and had the best of intentions for his father and the Imperium, had succumbed to rash pride in believing that he could control Chaos and that his superior intellect rendered him immune to the problems of the Warp and the allure of the Ruinious Powers.

The Emperor Protects, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#warhammer 40k

[sabyin-blog]

Leave Her to Heaven - Jealousy

"Jealousy is always born with love, but does not always die with it"

- François de La Rochefoucauld

Ellen’s jealousy originates from her strong possessive instinct, sensitivity, insecurity, and most importantly, her love for Richard. Her personality and behaviors remind me of another femme fatale – Norma in Sunset Boulevard. Norma is also insecure and sensitive. Her desire to possess Joe led her to kill him. Both Ellen and Norma were not driven crazy just by the existence of another woman. The potential love affair between their men and another woman also does not bother them. What troubles them is the threat to their individual sense of self-importance. Their high ego lends them to believe that they are incomparable and indispensable. It is intolerable when their status and self-worth are threatened. They will automatically take actions and generate an emotional response that we know as jealousy. Granted, if their men were attracted by other women, they will inevitably feel jealous and sad. However, it is not always about the guy, it is about the self that does not get recognized or loved enough. Thus, in this film, jealousy is born out of a combination of two loves – the love for oneself and the love towards another person (but has to be reciprocal.)

Daniel M. Farrell has introduced a ‘commodity theory’ of love and affection in his essay to explain how jealousy is generated. As he argues, jealousy is sometimes seen as a form of childish or immature emotion. But alternatively, jealousy could also be explained using reason and logic: “things like love and affection are in certain respects rather like scarce material commodities, so that one is well-advised to secure as much favoritism in the distribution of these commodities as one can.” Similarly, if we choose to explain jealousy in this manner, we could also apply the notion of “Sunk Costs Fallacy” to love. A sunk cost is a cost that has incurred and can never be recovered. In relationships, the cost is not limited to money and time; emotion and energy are also (and often the bigger) parts of the cost. If one has invested a lot in one relationship, it is not only hard for them to let it go, but also can’t help themselves generating extreme emotions such as anxiety, hatred, and jealousy. The theories stated above could help explain the love and jealousy one has towards his or her lover well. But it is not sufficient to understand how jealousy is born out of self-importance and jealousy generated from other kinds of non-romantic relationships.

In our daily lives, the strong sense of jealousy can also be generated among siblings in one family or when your best friend becomes closer to another friend. Given the circumstances, jealousy is a natural and almost instinctual response to threats – threats to one’s self-importance and threats to the possibility of the beloved being taken by others. With romantic love, it is hard enough for one to get over and hold the jealousy back since it is a monogamous love relationship – one will easily be replaced. But with familial love and philia, sometimes it is even harder to restrain one’s jealousy and let go.

In friendships, it is natural and common for one to get jealous. Becoming friends with someone means you have to acknowledge the fact that you are only one of his or her friends. You are special to your friends but not as unique as you thought you would be. He or she can also have many other friends who weigh equal importance as you do. At the beginning of a friendship, people are better keeping this notion in mind. But as soon as you recognize yourself as one’s close (or even closest) friend, it is hard to balance and control your emotions. Watching new people getting close to your beloved friend inevitably makes you jealous (it does not matter whether they are involved romantically or friendly.) Jealousy is still born out of your love for yourself as well as your love for others (your friend.) But it is harder to get over because becoming closer to your friend does not mean this person can only approach your friend. The new person will be able to get access to everyone in your friend group and that brings more threatens than getting hold of just one single human being. Also, the worry that this new person can replace you anytime (which is often not true) will bring out the feelings of being ignored, unappreciated, unseen and unloved by a group of people.

Sibling jealousy is even harder to heal since you share the same backgrounds. Your siblings and you should be treated equally and individually but why does your older brother get new jacket while you have to wear his old sweaters? Deep down you know the reason behind this gift choice but you can’t help yourself wondering why were you neglected by your parents – do they love you less than your brother? For romantic love and friendly love, when you are feeling unloved, you can always find new lovers and new friends to heal yourself. But for familial love, once you feel ignored and unloved, there’s no alternative that you can turn to and sometimes you can only grow along with your jealousy.