#and if i show any signs of weakness the self fulfilling prophecy will fulfill itself. everyone WILL hate me but like isn't that??? good???? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

saintfreda · 4 years

Text

character introduction — fredericke “freddie” dickinson dawson.

with a new & improved bio since the first one i added to the blog was far too rushed (and this one’s only... slightly better). TRIGGER WARNINGS: depression, death, financial problems, domestic abuse, violence, pregnancy, child abandonment.

“ look what i found , look what i found ! an artificial light , well , come gather round ! this is why we have lovers and why we have fighters . this is why the arms race and the particle colliders. mine is a humble flame , just a little white lighters — and it belongs to me ” (♫).

NAME : fredericke ann dickinson . an old name, another’s name — as tangible as ghosts now, an echo from the bottom of a well. whatever was left of fredericke dickinson now goes by the name of freddie dawson, fred for some friends (st. fred for the funny ones). AGE : thirty-eight (born september 12, 1977). PRONOUNS : she/her. GENDER : cis female. LOCATION : charming, ca. OCCUPATION : bartender (hoopers). SEXUAL ORIENTATION : bisexual. RELIGION : atheist. AFFILIATION : none.

PERSONALITY : “saint fred” — is it a nickname, a self-fulfilling prophecy? is it the destiny of the ones who were born to atone sins they can’t remember anymore? she remembers hearing it the first time, after covering a friend’s shift for the third time — she thought she liked the sound of it then, but it crawled under her skin, turned into a thought, a question, burrowed itself between the folds of her brain until each morning she’d open her eyes and think to herself: is this the day i become a martyr? thing is, it comes easy to her, playing the saint — always smile, always laugh, be there for everybody. have a safe shoulder to cry on, a wise joke to crack, a clever trick to keep her audience interested and intrigued. and still it’s a mask, or perhaps a layer of the hundreds she’s buried deep within herself. there’s things of her — true, honest pieces of the grotesque patchwork she’s made of herself — that flow up to the surface now and then, bubble up on her face: curiosity, a sharp humor, an ability to cut reality into thin strings of cutting-edge wisdom. then there’s the façade — a smile to hide the hollowness within, laughter to cover the screaming that won’t come. she’s made herself a shelter of her loneliness and is proud of it, it consoles her at night, thinking her self-imposed exile from a life worth living would be enough to make up for the good she couldn’t do. she calls everyone “friend”, would follow anyone into battle and yet won’t let them in — so scared, so frightened that they might look inside and find nothing but rot inside. but the outside, oh the outside is beautiful: as nurturing as a mother, warm and thrilling like that first drop of whiskey after sundown. sometimes she makes herself bigger than her demons and then she burns bright, fuel on the fire: it’s a show for others, for she can’t protect herself (she’s never been good at that, never good at nothing but running). there’s an unspoken safety distance she keeps with everyone, and everything’s warm until the line’s crossed — what lies behind the confine of the bar counter is a wasteland, no place any man or woman could set foot in. POSITIVE TRAITS : nurturing, clever, good spirited, humorous, wise, motherly, diligent, quiet, loyal, protective. NEGATIVE TRAITS : closed off, impulsive, proud, resentful, self-deprecating, bitter, frightened.

BIO —

TRIGGER WARNINGS : depression, death, prostitution, domestic abuse, violence, sexual abuse, child abandonment) .

��why’d you get so obsessed with that word, freddie? who told you about saints?” “grandpa did, he said he’s named after st. peter”. “and why do you care?” “‘cause he said saints do good things. i wanna be a saint, too”. “why on earth would you want that?” “‘cause, ma — i wanna save everyone”.

—

there’s a lifetime from that moment to now. she can remember it, but it comes in flashes, a hazy hue of desert gold — she remembers the girl she was, bright-eyed and restless, never shying away from the trail of a question. prying, relentless: the whole world could be simplified to reasons and whys, and she would hunt them the whole day long, out in the dust storms like the wind, not even it could dare question her spirits. whatever happened to that girl? dull, watered down: erased, and her own has been the hand rubbing her existence off her own life.

she couldn’t tell how it happened, or when it began — surely that summer of twenty-three years ago must have played its part. her mother losing her job (too tired, too tired all the time: too sad to see a doctor, too weak to even get out of bed anymore), bills piling up. her older sister trying hard to keep things afloat with an underpaid gig at the laundry, but it’s not enough. it’s never enough. one day grandpa comes home and he’s making math in his head, calculating how much longer they can survive if he sells the farm, the truck, the horse. that night freddie asks, how come their dad’s not around? he could provide, he could help them? grandpa grows colder then, gaze darker than the clouds gathering on the horizon: i’ll burn this place to the ground before he sets foot in here.

that side of the family, either way, is cunning and insidious, and it comes knocking at the door, offering business, a way to salvage the farm. it is victor, freddie’s uncle, who brings the offering: grandpa throws him out in spite, and freddie watches it all while she’s sitting on the fence outside, skin burning gold from the sun, dust sticking to her like glitter. you’re pretty, victor says: you might be your family’s only chance, you know? she doesn’t (can’t) understand, but she’ll walk any way that can save grandpa, his horse, her mother’s strength, her sister’s dreams of becoming a nurse.

turns out the way is a dark and winding one, one where she has to suck up the terror when a man touches her skin and she has to say yes, please, more, i’ll be anything you want, the key to unlocking all the dark and sick desires you’ve buried in there and can’t speak to anyone, not your wife, not your daughter, not your mother: give them to me, she whispers, let the darkness out. at night she takes hour-long showers to try and rub the darkness off of her, and it won’t come off, it never does — but grandpa didn’t have to sell the farm, and even if he was against her getting a job (said she’d be a waitress, don’t worry pops, i got it), the day he realized he wouldn’t have to sell the horse he smiled: it felt like the gates of heaven themselves would open.

she hates her job, but doesn’t mind the company. they make her work in a dismissed motel, along with girls about her age and her damage, and there is an unspoken bond of loyalty between them — the guys, too, when they’re guarding the doors they smile at them as fondly as they would their sisters (but they wouldn’t let their sisters in a place like this, no). there’s carl, who never speaks but smiles at fred each time he sees her. there’s billy, drives her home every night before victor can volunteer. there’s sonja, who teaches her how to punch a man’s throat when he gets too handsy. there’s a sense of family, while her own begins unraveling around the suspicion that something dark is going on.

the farm is saved, but mom’s not getting any better. depression sucks her up, little by little, and she drifts away more or less peacefully, doesn’t dare oppose resistance — she dies a morning of october, and neither of her daughters can speak of it. grandpa has to put down the horse a week later. she’d thought she’d saved everyone —— how come the darkness still won’t leave?

she grows sadder, dark as the clouds that won’t seem to leave their town alone. she finds an unexpected shoulder to cry on in the person of johnny, billy’s cousin and yet another one of victor’s men: johnny’s sweet, he makes her laugh. he begins driving her home at night instead of billy (his cousin’s not happy, she can see this: but he nods his agreement anyway and doesn’t protest, he can’t, johnny’s older and wiser and he’s still just a kid). the rest of it is as old and predictable as it gets: he says he’ll make an honest woman out of her, she retorts there needs to be an honest man for that to happen to begin with. they laugh, they kiss, they promise — five years later, she’s twenty-five and married, almost happy. almost.

she wants to leave her job. johnny said he can’t stand the thought of someone touching her where he should, and she tries: but victor won’t have it, no, did you think it was a temporary gig? come on girl, you’re smarter than that. he’s filthy, he humiliates her — beats her just to prove he can, he owns her. she comes home with bruises and johnny’s angry: if you couldn’t quit, he says, it’s because you didn’t really want it. his bruises are added to victor’s, perfectly symmetrical blooms to decorate her skin. she begins cracking, her very essence tearing at the seams — she was trying so hard to save everyone, how the fuck is she gonna save herself now?

billy comes over sometimes. his commitments to what he likes to call “street things” keep him out of the motel now, but he needs to check on her — she makes up excuses to keep away, hide the signs. says she’s got a bad cold one day, the other she’s just not feeling. one day he’s got enough and forces her to open the door: a busted lip, both her eyes grown purple with the blows. his anger is scalding hot but she manages to calm him down — it’s okay, she says, he just gets angry sometimes. i’ll find a way out of it somehow. he leaves in a hurry, never shows up again: the unspoken fear in her mind, that he’s gone and done something terrible he’ll regret, almost brings a relief to her sore mind. perhaps he’s killed him, she thinks. perhaps i’m free.

johnny comes back and it’s business as usual. she tells herself she’s gotta be strong, gotta leave this town, gotta make it out alive. she packs a bag and leaves it hidden under the bed, but the same day she realizes it’s been two months since her last period — surprise comes in the shape of two parallel lines on a stick. maybe this is the answer: it’s not herself, but this thing inside of her that’ll save her. when she tells johnny he’s over the moon, he’s burning with joy — says he’ll be a good man now, he’ll speak to victor himself and force him to leave her alone. the truce lasts two months: one night he comes home tired from work, bruised from a fight, and she hasn’t cooked dinner. he beats her within an inch to her death that night. in the morning, she grabs her bag and calls her sister. i’m sorry, she says through the tears. i fucked up. i need to come home.

grandpa’s dying, angie says. old age catching up to him, so all he does is lie in his bed all day and ask for movies to be played continuously on his tv. it’s an odd family they recreate now, the nurse, the dying man and the pregnant sister. there is a soft, mournful balance found, until one night victor shows up demanding to see her and when angie claims freddie isn’t there he has his men thrash the house just to get the point across: he can. he owns her.

she sits by her grandpa’s deathbed that night and weeps. i’m sorry, pops, i’m so sorry: i tried so hard to be a saint, to save everyone. perhaps he’s just exhaling, but it sounds like he’s laughing. child, he says, saints always die either virgins or martyrs. you fucked up the first — now you just gotta pray you’re good enough for the latter.

grandpa dies two weeks later, and freddie’s not there. right after victor’s visit, angie gave her money just to get her away from them, and bring her trouble with her — grandpa dies a week before her baby’s born, taken out of her and delivered into a nurse’s hands without so much as a goodbye. they ask, would you like to see your baby? freddie turns and pretends she didn’t hear. wherever the baby will end up, it’s gotta be a better fate than the child of a martyr.

and yet in the morning she wakes up and finds herself without strings. a chance, a tangible way to start over again somewhere — an ad for a wanted bartender brings her out to charming, california. not much of an eden or a promised land, but it’s far too easy to get a fake i.d. and put on a brave face — much braver than the one she’s worn so far.

#charming.intro #FILE / mine's a humble light.

6 notes · View notes

avelera · 5 years

Note

So Raleigh and Mako have their iconic first face-to-face meeting at the helipad and people have written meta about how drift-memories show Mako silhouetted and haloed by the umbrella while Raleigh looks commanding and soulful. We know they'd been writing for a few years but do you have any strong headcanons about how Newton and Hermann first met face-to-face?

(For the record, I LOVE that meta about Raleigh and Mako that you’re referencing!)

This is a really interesting question, Anon! A lot of my headcanons kinda come about either because of fanfic I read that feels “right” or expediency for something I need in a story where I need an explanation that feels “right”. My headcanon about their first meeting is definitely a combination of those two. I think the @hermannhaslovedthestars webcomic does an EXCELLENT job and really solidified for me a sense of what happened, and a vague reference to that sort of set up (which I’ll describe below) even played into some dialogue I wrote for the latest Prisoners’ Dilemma chapter (hopefully forthcoming this week).

I’ll go into detail below, putting it below a cut so I can ramble ;P

So I think their first meeting was a huge disappointment for both of them, like soul-crushing. They had been writing canonically “passionate” letters to one another for years, the idea they were crushing hard on one another remotely is so ubiquitous in fanon it’s practically canon at this point. My thoughts on this draw from other PR meta I’ve enjoyed but they include:

- The letters helped filter out some of Newt’s more rambling and hyperactive interactions and leveled him out enough that he came across as, y’know, a normal human. It also let his genius shine in a way Hermann found appealing.

- Likewise for Hermann–I was going to say that the letters helped Hermann come out of his shell but I just realized that’s fanon and not canon. Canonically, Hermann has no trouble butting into conversations he’s not a part of and saying rather embarrassing personal things like the “Handwriting of God” speech. At least when it comes to his field (which is the extent of how we see him really in the films) he’s not shy at all. So let’s let that fanon die for a second.

- Really what the letters probably did for Hermann was make him less of a stern, judgmental jerk hung up on his work. He’s a bit of a forbidding person even (if not especially) with his social awkwardness. So I imagine it’s more that the letters allowed him the perceived privacy (see his rule about “public displays of affection”) to open up a bit and maybe even make flirtatious overtures and give compliments to Newt. So letters helped him come across as a normal human as well, one who can give displays of affection.

- So then you’ve got this situation where both of them in person are so much more abrasive than they are over letters. Newt is too loud and chaotic and any playful jabs he makes probably don’t land right and end up stinging Hermann’s pride instead. Hermann is too stern and serious, a total killjoy, and his waspishness is on full display. He won’t do anything affectionate in public, where they probably met, so none of his softer side can come through. Newt is bouncing off the walls and not checking himself at all or slowing down to clarify his point or pad it with anything less than his unfiltered internal monologue.

- I see both of their worst social habits going into absolute overdrive as the first meeting progresses. They were both already super nervous, and then as things don’t click they get even more nervous, so they both fall back on their worst behavior instincts, insulting one another and trying to shore up their pride (which both have in spades, to the point of arrogance). This just makes matters worse and before you know it, they’re both in too deep to calm down and check in with one another and see if there’s been some kind of misunderstanding along the way.

- All their worst fears about the other, and about this meeting, are realized. This is in part because I’m sure both had a best case scenario and a worst case scenario in their head, with nothing in between (even though reality is always in between), and it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy when everything isn’t amazing and it’s not this incredible meeting of souls where finally all the social isolation they’ve felt elsewhere just melts away because they’re with each other.

- Because here’s the thing, our social habits don’t just go away when we’re with someone we care for. No one can read our minds. And it takes a bit of acclimation before even the most attentive soulmate can read what’s really happening in our heads. I think from the letters they thought they knew one another very well and, sure, they knew one another’s minds very well, but not their social cues like, “I insult people when I’m nervous,” for Newt or “I snap at people when I feel like I’ve lost control of a situation,” for Hermann.

- By the way, Hermann canonically shows he cares by snapping at Newt, for example about his safety for the Drift experiment, disguised as criticism of the experiment itself, which Newt was unable to see for what it was. Meanwhile, Newt is like an immature kid on the playground: he pulls Hermann’s proverbial pigtails because he wants his attention, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative attention. But look at how he puffs up around Hannibal Chau as well and tries to impress him! Newt pokes the bear with people whose positive attention he craves, which are people he respects. If he didn’t respect Hermann, he wouldn’t care about getting his attention at all, but Hermann can’t read that about him.

- Most tragically though, I think both of them needed that meeting to be everything for them. They needed to see fireworks and hear the choirs of angels singing. At even the first sign of awkwardness, which could have even been just due to mistranslation or confusion, I think the first chink in the armor appeared, and then everything fell apart like dominoes after that as the anxiety level skyrocketed when things didn’t go as well as they had dreamed (and of course they didn’t, because they couldn’t). And that built the resentment as the other “betrayed” what Newt/Hermann needed from him, emotionally, to the point where it became a wall that was impossible to climb over without one of them, at least one of these two prideful, socially inept geniuses to back down. Someone needed to bend and say, “Hey, did I miss something?” but I also think, for the record, that both of them were bullied growing up and when you’re bullied you often learn 1) how to be a bully yourself and 2) how to not show weakness. So they locked themselves in a game of chicken where neither could back down from being a jerk because to admit weakness was to lose. The pen-pal becomes the enemy and neither knew how to stop it from spiraling further after that.

- I do think they both secretly know they “like” each other, or at least that they see themselves as “in the trenches” together and that they do have positive interactions (largely despite themselves) over the year, but in order to end the fighting, it really does take Hermann conceding that he cares whether or not Newt lives or dies with the “I’ll go with you,” line about the Drift. He’s conceding that Newt’s idea will work (which he resisted before) and helping Newt. Newt immediately construes it as a romantic overture because, well, it kind of is for them in a way that I consider borderline canonical given that the actors played them as in love in Uprising. Hermann ducks a little bit there and pleads “the end of the world” as a reason for his change of heart, but Newt basically disregards that (as he does many things Hermann says, lol) and makes it a friendship thing anyway which Hermann responds to as well, giving lie to his claim that it was pure business.

So to go back to that first meeting… I think it was a date. Maybe they met at a bar or a coffee shop. Maybe it was more romantic than that. Maybe one of them set it up to be a date and the other thought they’d meet before trying to date, and the wires got all crossed. But I absolutely believe that both built up this first meeting in their mind to such heights that there’s no way on earth that they wouldn’t walk away disappointed in some way, and that’s exactly what happened.

Edit: Actually, I wanted to add how I think that would play visually.

I bet in their memories there is a visual change in the Drift from what “really” happened.

I bet both of them are larger than life in that memory. I bet in the memory of the first time they laid eyes on each other they both look amazing, like the hottest fanartist take on the other that you can imagine. Newt looks like a rockstar. Hermann looks like, well, Burn Gorman in a suit when he’s not trying to look “like Hermann” (which has a whole physicality around it to downplay how fucking hot that man really is).

I bet it morphs. I bet they both start to take on aspects of a childhood bully the other had. Newt becomes sneering, Hermann becomes disdainful. They start to “look” like someone who is out to get them but maybe, just maybe, the attractiveness level doesn’t drop. Hey, if you’ve been bullied, if you’ve been socially awkward, then chance are you’ve been rejected by someone you perceived as attractive, to the point where attractiveness itself becomes forbidding.

It could play into them making the other out to be some sort of obnoxious little goblin that’s out to get them: downplay the threat, make it ridiculous and mock it so it isn’t as scary. Hermann is constantly pointing out to others and himself how hopeless Newt is, Newt points out how Hermann’s (probably staggering) intelligence is pointless and basically just self-important noise.

But to go back, I think visually in the Drift they’d see one another as “sneering” for most of their memories, but it would be like scars overlaying this borderline angelic or heroic first image of them informed by that love and hope that things would work between them, before they opened their goddamn stupid mouths and ruined it.

#newmann #pacific rim #pr meta #my meta #kidnapping au #Anonymous

40 notes · View notes

nyardynn · 6 years

Text

Plotholes of FF15; the ultimate edition

It’s come to my attention that with the plot being as wonky and contradictory, many (including me) find it hard to decide what’s a plothole and what’s simply a part left vague by the game. I’ve made a list of all the plotholes I could think about so far which is..uh.. quite the long read. I’ve wanted to have it though while waiting for the new DLCs.

1. Ravus is made responsible for the Niflheim army’s huge defeat in Altissia and sentenced to death, however we can see him well and free walking into the Emperor’s throne room in Zegnautus Keep. Since at this time almost the entirety of Niflheim has fallen victim to the starscourge it’s possible he escaped somehow and came to finish the Emperor off, but the game explains nothing.

2. The starscourge seems to be an illness progressing either very fast or very slowly, possibly at a pace chosen by Ardyn himself if he so wills it. Emperor Aldercapt is mentioned to have infected himself with the scourge shortly after Ardyn’s appearance at his court which was 30 years before he transformed, meanwhile Ravus turned into a demon mere minutes, maybe an hour after infection. Again the game explains nothing

3. Ifrit got infected with the starscourge by a mysterious man who is given no name but who can only be Ardyn. If Ardyn apparently can kill and infect gods, why did he not infect any of the others so they would abandon Noctis and fight for his cause instead? We know the Empire has killed many gods including Shiva whose dead body still lies where its fallen on Niflheim grounds.

4. The gods die but they also don’t. Both Shiva and Titan are canonly dead and you can see Shiva’s dead body, however both are also alive spiritually (?) aiding you in battle.

5. Ardyn is the only creature who didn't die from the starscourge, it just made him a godlike being instead. Why?

6. Bahamut delivered the prophecy to mankind telling of a king of kings to be chosen to save the world, a thing the gods want to happen because they have sworn to protect mankind - still every single one of them except Shiva and the Fulgurian try to kill Noctis. That means despite Bahamut revealing to Regis that his son is the chosen one when he was only a toddler, apparently noone else believes it and everyone doubts his ‘chosen-ness’. Get your shit together, gods.

7. Ardyn was known and worshipped as an extraordinarily selfless man who healed millions of the starscourge, however that led to him infecting himself eventually which caused the events of FF15 and the world being plunged into eternal darkness. Lunafreya has also been given the power to heal the starscourge - by Bahamut, if you believe the cosmogony which states he descended to Eos to handpick a maiden to be the first oracle. Are we to assume Ardyn was a prototype gone wrong who then was cast aside in favour of a new healer type? Or does Luna maybe infect herself slowly? Which leads us to the next point...

8. Lunafreya is sick. A cutscene taking place in Altissia has her weak and pleading to Ravus to take the ring and give it to Noctis, because she fears she will not be able to any longer, because her body is already failing her. We are however never told what this weakness is and it is literally never shown except in this scene. Is it the ‘prize of the covenant’ Ardyn mentions to know well, also in Altissia? Does doing her oracle duty sap her of life (sounds ineffective)? Or is that prize the starscourge? Or is the ring somehow killing her like the ring of Sauron??

9. For Bahamut to give the oracle her powers to heal the scourge, obviously he himself must be able to heal the scourge, however he never does.... was making Ardyn wait for 2000 years until Noctis could sacrifice his sad life for him a sick form of entertainment? Or can he just not heal Ardyn somehow? Whatever it is, Bahamut heals noone ever, not so sworn to protect humankind after all, I guess. See number 7.

10. Ardyn is often referred to as a chosen king, however we are explicitely told he was forbidden to ascend. Many believe this means the crystal never chose him and that seems to be what happened regarding his grudge against the crystal especially. What relativizes this again though is the cosmogony itself: “There once was a man born a mortal but blessed with powers divine. Conjuring a collection of glaives he dispelled the darkness plaguing our star. As a reward for his efforts the gods granted him a holy stone” - The Crystal, which he was to guard at all cost. Cleansing the world of the scourge in his time is a thing Somnus The Mystic is known for. That means the Crystal was given to mankind AFTER Ardyn became ‘the lost son’. Except the cosmogony was rewritten to exclude Ardyn which means the cosmogony is not a reliable source of history and lore at all. Seems like it, because being written out of history (again) is a thing Ardyn is concerned over when he dies. However what seems to be another fact making all of this more confusing is that according to Ardyn Somnus, if he got the crystal or not, himself was not chosen by the time he had Ardyn executed. Possibly he never was. Possibly noone ever was except Noctis who seems to be Ardyn’s successor in all ways possible. In their last fight Ardyn refers to Noctis as the chosen king, but ‘a second rate chosen at best’ seemingly referring to himself who was definitely sheduled to be chosen 2000 years ago. Maybe all of this is intentionally confusing and contradictory, but due to the missing pieces it is literally impossible to figure out the truth so it remains a plothole: was Ardyn meant to be the king of kings? Was he supposed to be ‘just’ the first king? Was Ardyn given the crystal or was Somnus? We will never know until maybe Episode Ardyn hopefully.

11. Ascended Noctis is - apparently - immortal. Ardyn who is pretty much the only character at this point who we can assume to know his shit explains his motives to Noctis as he is being pulled into the crystal the following way: “Killing you as a mortal will bring me scant satisfaction.” Evidently the King of Kings is immortal, at least in a way that he can not die a natural death.

12. If Ardyn was a prototype of the King of Kings who failed maybe the starscourge did not kill him because he was always meant to be immortal? Ardyn really is the gods’ fault, isn’t he? Pure food for thought though. You can fill a book with Ardyn theories due to the massively wonky plot of FF15.

12. Ascended Noctis is maybe not only immortal, but definitely more powerful than the gods. The gods can’t kill Ardyn. They can’t restore light. Bahamut actually explains to Noctis inside the crystal that his ascension will elevate him above the gods. We are never told why Noctis has to die to fulfill the prophecy though and if you accept Episode Ignis as being a valid alternate universe, a what-if path where all mechanics of Eos are still in effect, then very clearly Noctis never really had to die, it is just what Bahamut tells him. Maybe the ‘blood prize’ that needs to be paid is really only the gods’ hubris of not wanting another deity that is stronger than them ruling their little SIMS world of a kingdom. Like the blood prize Nyx pays for using the ring. Bunch a’assholes. See number 9.

13. Now on to Prompto. Dear god, Prompto is a gold mine. Prompto says in Zegnautus Keep that he always knew his barcode was the sign of an MT and that he is really from Niflheim, but it’s not something he could just tell his Lucian friends. So Prompto apparently knew MTs are somehow made from humans, however in his own Episode he seems shocked by the reveal.

14. However did Prompto know anyway if he was rescued as a baby? Did his step parents know and tell him later? Who the fuck are his step parents and why does this not have any role at all in the game?? If his step parents knew, who else fucking knows about MTs? Did Regis know? Deemed a plothole because if Regis did not know then his wall is apparently not as safe as he thinks for Niflheim people to sneak in and raise an MT there and if he DID know then he really oughta have known he was sending an MT with Noct who could betray him at any time which was actually supposed to happen in early scripts.

15. MTs start out as babies, however all of the Prompto clones we see in Episode Prompto are adults, which means they either give them about 20 years to grow into a demon core which is unlikely since they’ve had MTs for a long time and in huge numbers or the clones just grow super fast. Prompto however doesn’t age super fast. Something here is either lazy coding or very, very fucky.

16. What actually is an MT? Clearly MTs are mainly made from metal and not at all a human or demon in a suit though it is still a common misconception in parts of the fandom. They don’t bleed when they die, instead they give off electric sparks and show dozens of broken wires next to miasma. Their bodies are decidedly human looking, they can be programmed which is an integral part of their function lest they become violent and uncontrollable and they also move decidedly robotic. Our best guess at this point is that the demon core is the essence of a demon condensed into a ‘battery’ that is shielded from light by its purely robotic body. According to the files you find on MTs the reason human clones are chosen for the process is that they do not suffer a loss of ego and do not go insane which normal humans did when they used regular citizens. I assume that means the clones do not have a sense of self since they never were self-aware to begin with. They became conscious already being MTs. And then we have Episode Prompto where apparently an MT fears death which clearly indicates an ego. Or maybe that was Prom’s imagination, after all he also fantasized his childhood self…

17. Ardyn seems to know a lot about Solheim technology to be able to give Niflheim the ability to create advanced robotic soldiers or the tech to develop airships… quite a savvy chosen king for a time in which any and all Solheim technology was shunned by the gods as heretical. Either Ardyn never was such a holy messiah or very, very much of that Solheim tech was still present in everyday life in Ardyn’s time… provided the gods were cool with their king meant to lead people back to faith using any of it. Since, you know, the gods hated Solheim. That’s why they made Lucis.

18. The Ring according to the cosmogony is the sign for someone fit to rule, however also according to the cosmogony the ring can be weilded by everyone who’s worthy, not only the king. We see this confirmed in Nyx and Ignis. That strongly indicates not everyone in the long line of the Lucis Caelum was worthy either and in fact there are only a very short number of kings resting inside the ring including Regis who very obviously wore and used it. It seems to me we are led to believe putting on the ring is always a risk even for a Lucis Caelum; they might be burned and killed just like everybody else. That appears to fit the obvious fear in Noctis to put on the ring which he then only does because Ardyn took all his other weapons. The kings inside the ring don’t seem to see things the way the cosmogony does in any way condescending Nyx for being ‘not even a king’ - so what is it really?

I’ll stop here though I’m sure I could think of more if I tried. The truth is, FF15 could have done with some more proper development time to clear out many of these issues. I’d love to hear more of these if anyone has some more!

#ff15 #final fantasy #final fantasy 15 #ardyn izunia #noctis lucis caelum

25 notes · View notes

buzzdixonwriter · 6 years

Text

Social Justice Warrior Snowflake

All the unimaginative neo-nazis and their alt-right fans glom onto certain catch phrases the way anxious middle schoolers glom onto the latest slang in a desperate attempt to pass for one of the cool kids.

Catch phrases and slogans are a great way to avoid thinking, and when you avoid thinking you dupe yourself into believing you are also avoiding responsibility, that if anything goes wrong the “they” are responsible and not “me” because “I was only following orders” or “they said it was okay”.

Neeps. Nope. Sorry. We allow none of that bullshit here.

Here we do the math, we show the work, we follow things through to their logical-even-if-painful conclusions…and we live with the results.

So let’s look at two phrases the neo-nazi propagandists and their stooges like to bandy about.

The first is “social justice warrior” or SJW.[1]

Let’s break the phrase down into its three components.

First, ”social”. From the Latin socialis "of companionship, of allies; united, living with others; of marriage, conjugal"; in this context it means “of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society.”

In particular, relating to an orderly, peaceable culture among people who follow basic principles that reduce friction and maximize benefits to as many people as possible.

A society adheres to certain codes / morals / taboos / ethics so as to maintain order.

Clearly, not all societies are the same, and what might fly in an Irish pub might not pass muster in a Moroccan coffee house.

However, both societies, Irish and Moroccan, possess certain standards they subscribe to, and woe to those who violate said standards by either acts of omission or commission.

If you deny a patron of either pub or coffee house their due rights in those environments, you can expect someone to stick up for them.

So “social” in the SJW context means a person who recognizes no one is an island, and that all of us owe one another basic rights and courtesies.

To be opposed to “social” means by definition to be anti-social, or to live one’s life only for one’s own benefit.

Not all anti-social people are destructive psychopaths, but by definition all destructive psychopaths are anti-social.

So to use “social” as part of a derogatory insult is pretty much declaring one is at odds with what society stands for.

This is not necessarily a good thing. Hunter S. Thompson wrote extensively about Hell’s Angels and other outlaw motorcycle clubs, and while he took a sympathetic view of them and pointed out the numerous times they had been framed or set up by the establishment, he also noted their isolation from society fueled their animus against it, a truly self-fulfilling / self-defeating prophecy.

The Hell’s Angels, a surprisingly conservative and authoritarian group on their own terms, at least possess a live-and-let-live attitude where they will not actively seek out confrontation if left alone.

Not so the neo-nazis, who see any gain by any non-neo-nazi as a loss for them.

Which brings us to the second part of the phrase, “justice”.

Bad movies and TV shows and comic books obliterate the original meaning of “justice” and replace it with retribution.

Retribution is not justice. Retribution is merely…retribution.

Justice is what happens before any wrong occurs; justice is not about returning pain for pain.

The neo-nazi mindset scorns the idea of justice while embracing the concept of punishment.

Punishment is what those in authority mete out to those who dare disobey them, and this is the rationale behind the alt-right’s scorn of justice.

“Justice” in the SJW context means taking pro-active steps to avoid harm or injustice falling on someone.

Justice is served if a store isn’t robbed, it is not served if it merely punishes those who committed the crime.

This is why the neo-nazis mock the concept of justice, frequently linking it to a straw man of their own devising: Political Correctness.

“PC” is nothing more / nothing less than the golden rule -- threat others as you wish to be treated -- writ large. It is an open and above board effort to forestall problems and injustice and harm by rephrasing issues so all sides are treated fairly,

I have yet to hear an anti-PC argument that does not boil down to some variant of “I can’t call people [slur of choice] anymore without being criticized for it!”

Anti-PC rhetoric is the mark of the coward and the bully, not of fearless persons who can defend their ideas.

As noted previously, the neo-nazi / anti-PC mindset is incapable of tolerating anything that challenges its authority, despite such authority often being unearned.

When they hear an oppressed group should be treated with the exact same dignity and respect them demand for themselves from others, neo-nazis respond with anger and resentment that their “right” to treat others unilaterally without fear of accountability or reprisal is being challenged.

Their argument against “Political Correctness” and their argument against “justice” are one and the same, and knowing that an open and honest assessment of their arguments would demonstrate their intellectual and ethical bankruptcy, they lash out in pre-emptive strikes (literally and figuratively) to prevent themselves from ever having to live up to the standards established by America’s founding fathers.

Their claims that “PC culture” squelches the free expression of ideas is simply further proof of the paucity of their own arguments.

Ideas can be expressed in a vast array of means, and if so-called “PC culture” requires a certain vocabulary, then intellectually fully engaged people can make their ideas known -- and known clearly! -- in any number of ways.

Neo-nazis fancy themselves as people of action, not intellect, and as noted do not want a genuine discussion of ideas but only acquiescence to a system that benefits them at the expense of others.

They refuse to embrace any system in which they are not the dominant group but instead are one of many.[2]

The final sneer from the neo-nazis’ lips is aimed at “warrior” which they use with deliberate irony, denigrating SJWs as impotent whiners while they are people of action.[3]

They hurl this epithet at those who stand up and voice support for people who have received a raw deal by society and want to see them treated fairly under the law.

This is where one must pause and scratch one’s head at the number of military and law enforcement personnel who support neo-nazi beliefs. They are either woefully ill-informed on who and what they are supposed to be defending, or else they are deliberately and willfully betraying the nation that has trusted them.

And I write this as a military vet. Even in the post-Vietnam era we were all acutely aware we had sacrificed certain rights and privileges guaranteed our fellow citizens in order to serve our country by protecting those rights and privileges for those fellow citizens.

Too many military and police today do not see themselves as servants of their nation and what it stands for, but rather as self-justified authority, might made right by application of force.

It’s easy to grasp why this appeals to the neo-nazi mindset -- inarticulate action aimed at others to force them to obey simply for the sake of obedience.

And it is a well documented fact that in many jurisdictions the police have indeed been infiltrated by crypto-fascists -- klansmen, neo-nazis, and white supremacists -- who subvert the mission of their own departments in order to wage war n those they consider “undesirable”.[4]

Thus, whenever one hears the term “social justice warrior” used as an insult, one is very clearly hearing the speaker rejecting all sense of society and justice in order to claim unearned power and authority over others.

There is no escaping this truth.

In the case of the military and the police, this attitude besmirches the huge sacrifice made by others in order to protect the weak, the poor, the powerless, the defenseless, and the oppressed.

The military and police who support neo-nazis and their alt-right followers are for all intents and purposes wiping their asses with the Constitution and turning Arlington into a vast cesspool.

If that image offends thee, soldier / sailor / airman / officer, ask yourself why.

As stated earlier, there is no dodging unpleasant truth here.

Finally, the neo-nazis’ use of the term “snowflake” to denigrate SJWs. Again, the all too literal neo-nazi mindset fails to grasp the irony of their use of the term.

To them a snowflake is weak and ineffectual, melting at the first sign of trouble.

As with the fasces, the symbol they use belies their own philosophy.

A snowflake by itself is weak and fragile; every human being is.[5]

You know what you call a bunch of snowflakes moving in the same direction?

AN AVALANCHE

And nothing stops an avalanche: You either get out of the way or you let it roll over you and hope you survive.

By their words ye shall know them. The neo-nazis and their alt-right supporters are incapable of recognizing how badly their own words portray them. They do not lack the intellectual capacity to grasp such ideas -- indeed, in technical fields they often easily grasp far more complex subjects -- but they lack the introspection to see how “social justice” is in fact a true measure of a person.

They lack introspection because they fear responsibility.

They love exercising authority over others, they loath exercising mastery over themselves.

. . .

[1] Another sign of weak minded neo-nazis is not only a fondness for reducing everything down to simplistic slogans but then boiling those slogans down even further into abbreviations. What this does is remove all intellectual thought and rational articulation from the equation, suspends critical thinking, and renders complex, profound, and often nuanced and complicated issues down to pure visceral emotional reactions -- reactions often totally at odds with the subject they are directed towards. Eventually even the abbreviations are discarded and replaced by a symbol designed to stir up violent emotion and spur unreflective action guided by others who are doing the thinking for those doing the work. “SJW” is always used in a sneering, derogatory, to ridicule and belittle those whom the neo-nazis and their alt-right sycophants have slapped this label on.

[2] Ironically, the very symbol of fascism -- the fasces, or axe with the handle reinforced by a bundle of sticks -- was co-opted by Mussolini and his crew of thugs despite the fact it symbolized the very thing they were opposed to! (i.e., trust, loyalty, and cooperation among all people).

[3] Yeah, I know, I’ve seen pictures of them, too. Irony is not one of their strong points.

[4] And the great tragedy -- the great betrayal -- is that honorable police officers, exhibiting loyalty to their own, allow the normalization of such treacherous behavior, and in doing so actually undermine their own real authority as well as the authority of the society that grants them that authority in order to protect the society itself.

[5] Though neo-nazis and their ilk live in a mental comic book where they are great invulnerable superheroes who can do no wrong and make no mistakes.

#politics #social justice warriors #morality #ethics #culture #society #justice

2 notes · View notes

fentonizer · 7 years

Text

Zero Value

“You should do some more writing” my girlfriend said to me in what may just be a narrative framing device.

I have always dabbled in writing, and people have always been polite enough to tell me the things that they’ve read that I wrote have been good.

Truth is, of late I have been in a funk. “Funk” being an offhand and slang way of distancing the problem that is no doubt a depressive disorder. Low mood is the symptom, as as far as symptoms go, it sounds benign. Everything is grey a lot of the time, and I do not know where the colour has gone.

I can’t seem to remember the last thing I looked forward to. Nothing grand anyway, nothing more important than a pizza, or a lie in. The days, like much of my writing are a run-on sentence.

I did write a 2000 word, mostly auto-biographical story about the year of my life twenty-fourteen, a year where a lot of “mad shit” happened to me and which I have never fully internally processed to closure. I probably never will.

Here are a few paragraphs from it I feel comfortable sharing with you:

There’s a documented condition called Paris Syndrome; a form of culture shock, the romanticised view of France and Paris specifically, a city of green grass, culture, love and that European free spirit is at odds with the reality of an overpopulated, dirty city, full of normal French people sick to death of tourists.

Depression itself is like Paris Syndrome, but instead of culture shock, it’s existence shock. You’ve been thrown into a world you don’t understand and are trying to cope. It’s not like how you thought it would be, is it? It’s not like how you were told it would be. Everyone else seems to have it together, right? Why aren’t I like that? Why do I go home and want to do nothing but rest in bed? Where do these people find the energy to do all this stuff? See places. Go to things. What am I missing that doesn’t make me feel capable of doing all that too?

The quintessential existential problem is feeling like you don’t belong and having no memory of the place where you do, if it even ever existed in the first place. How can one hope to fit in and find purpose when we have no template with which to work from? This is the void depressives speak of, like being perpetually hungry for a meal that doesn’t exist, the hole is indescribable precisely because nothing will fill it. It is formless, and we try to sleep, eat, drink, love, talk and fuck our way to a fulfilment that doesn’t exist for us.

We cannot ever get a plane out of Paris.

My intuition tells me only one thing here, and that is that because I am actually quite proud of the literary clarity of my mental state in the above, it is likely trite, probably plagiarised, and essentially of zero value.

Maybe you know or even remember that I wrote the allgamesshouldbedarksouls blog. This was a few years ago, before even Dark Souls 2 came out and society hit what we now refer to as “Peak Dark Souls.”

I don’t really want to go on about it, but it’s easily summarised. Remember liking “the cake is a lie” references? Then remember hating them as overdone and shallow, popularised not because of any real love for the art or end result, but because it was coded “in-language” that separated you from “them?” Like drawing a fish in the sand, we understand, and we’re safe here, away from those neophytes. And when they kneel at my feet, saying “Why!? Why didn’t we listen to you about how Dark Souls was an instant classic?” I will shove them aside. They had their chance, and no, I will not lend you my copy of it now.

The writing was good (people were polite enough to tell me) but as far as “video” “game” “writing” goes, it was shallow and I could see that. It was overly concerned with mechanics and more than implied some measure of objectivity in game-design. Plus, I was really tired of the “angry young dude hates every video game for petty reasons” shtick, knowing full well that if you gave me money and a team to design a videogame I would inevitably shit out something milquetoast.

But nevertheless, it was well received and proved that if I had the inclination I could string words together to create something vaguely compelling, although possibly I’m not accounting for the low bar of the subject matter, in this, the medium where you can wax idiotic about your constitutional right to kill a virtual prostitute.

I bring this up not because it’s the one good thing I’ve ever produced and reminisce about it daily, but because it’s yet another unfortunate example of something in my life that I tried, started to get somewhere with, then got bitter about not being handed fame on a plate and gave up.

I noticed this of myself today; (now, look, this is going to get pretty pathetic, but my girlfriend said I should write more (she didn’t), and I’m being open and honest with you, even if that reveals some... truths.) I have very few twitter followers. Not even 150. I use twitter all the time, every day. I say things, I make jokes, I comment on current events. I have tweeted almost 6000 things. I use hashtags, and I use them correctly. I do not, repeat DO NOT, make up random hashtags about my day like #FentonsTeaBreak, which is, like, something everyone who is new to using twitter does in the first week and thinks they are hilarious for doing.

But I am yet to find any more than 150 people who are interested in things I have to say. And 150 is generous as well, I suspect at least half of those are either robots, people who have since died, or people who followed when they signed up because Twitter suggested it might be a good idea and haven’t logged in since.

I actually lose more followers than I gain, and I can assure you that it not because of self-pitying screeds like this (I learnt that lesson about 4000 tweets ago). If you've never felt unsure about your place in the world, imagine the feeling that it is easier to find people who actively regret choosing to listen to you, and you’ve got a good approximation.

Today brought this to the fore as I saw a tweet that was basically the same as a tweet I made, retweeted into the thousands, simply because that person’s audience was bigger than mine. It was weirdly validating, that yes, my thought would have been accepted en mass, but also infuriating like meekly muttering a joke, only to have your confident friend repeat it, louder, to roars of applause (having used better words with a defter sense of comedic timing).

I realise this is incredibly arrogant. People are busy, and the world does not stop when Fenton Makes A Tweet. These days, everyone is a “content producer.” Running the wide gamet of pictures of their cat all the way along to pictures of their latte. There simply isn’t enough internet attention to go around, because mostly, it’s all so fucking boring.

I have come to see twitter more as a diary. A repository of my thoughts so that, like the cold unfeeling robot I am, I can purge the memory banks once this string has been archived, and move on to thinking other things (there is no rider to this joke, I am not going to list two normal things followed by one surreal thing).

For 6 months in 2016, I captured approximately 40 minute chunks of me playing video-game farming simulator Stardew Valley. I uploaded these videos to YouTube and in each I would talk about the game and talk about things going on in the world and it was generally incredibly cathartic. I appreciate there’s not much of a market for what ended up being about 70 hours of unedited video-content of a man, forever teetering on the the brink of an emotional meltdown talk about miking a virtual cow, but goddammit, I produced that content anyway. Fuck the haters (of which there were none).

Someone once said of my brief foray into stand-up comedy, that I was talented but showed an obvious lack of preparedness. That review (3 stars, Milton Keynes SnoZone, 2010) was a more accurate summary of my being than any psychoanalyst has ever achieved. I do not apply myself, and therefore I do not achieve. Even this, these very words that you’re reading right now, I am writing so that I don’t have to practice for a tournament of a game I supposedly enjoy playing and want to be good at.

My entire life feels like a omnibus of half-efforts. Even my job, which I openly loathe, I don’t quit because I do not want to risk trying anything different and have it be worse. I talk myself out of it daily for reasons like “you only know how to do this once specific job anyway” and “other jobs are probably a lot harder.” I give up before I even begin, and then use that same lack of motivation as a self-fulfilling prophecy to convince myself that it was never going to happen anyway, so I’m justified in giving up.

And then, on top of this, the Earth in year 2017 is a shit show to the point that your troubles are pretty small-fry. I’ve drafted tweets, had thoughts, typed internet comments, and then fallacied myself into relative privation by realising “wait, maybe the world doesn’t need THIS JOKE right now, because Muslim’s are being unlawfully detained at airports. Is this really the time for a pun on the word fondant?”

Today is February 2nd. It’s hashtag Time-To-Talk day. And that is as good an excuse as I’m going to get to be this massively self-indulgent and start my commitment to writing more by laying out my neuroses on the shaky pre-tense of lowering the stigma towards mental health.

But please, talk to each other. See your faults, your weaknesses, understand why you feel like you do and then you can start looking at changing patterns and habits that might be bad for you.

Don’t keep this shit locked up. Be brave. Talk. It’s ok. People will understand that you’re a mad-shit. Write a blog post that people will have trouble deciding if it’s too meta or not meta enough.

Society puts so much pressure on us to perform. Be like this. A man should be like THIS, a woman should be like THAT. This is damaging and only serves to alienate.

Mental health is important. My mental health needs constant work. Did you actually read the above paragraphs? That’s my brain all day “Not good enough, stupid weak thoughts, stupid weak job, you’re a failure and it’s no surprise you give up.”

To be Onan just one more time, my mental health is really the only thing I’ve never given up on.

Plus, of course, I have an amazing support network of my partner, family and friends. And if you feel you don’t have this kind of network, then there are plenty of resources which are listed here, the Time To Change website: http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/mental-health-and-stigma/help-and-support or you can drop me a line.

#timetotalk

1 note · View note

dani-qrt · 6 years

Text

Australia Is Rich, Strong and Afraid of the World

Want the Australia Letter by email? Sign up and forward my weekly dispatches to your friends so they can join our discussion about Australia and the world.

______

The ritual of Australia’s federal budget, with leaks, a lockup and then a flood of coverage about winners and losers often reminds me of an awards show. It’s the Oscars for fiscal fanatics, politics reporters and a boom-era government that has plenty of money to move around.

Last year, I went to Canberra for the festivities. This year I did not, which gave me a chance to focus on one element of the budget announcement: Australia’s relationship to the wider world.

A few items that factor into the equation (with figures in Australian dollars):

• Intelligence: The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) will receive a funding increase of $24 million for operations, plus $18 million for a legal review, along with $52 million for intelligence oversight. And there’s another undisclosed pool of money for undisclosed activities.

• Foreign Aid: Australia’s total aid budget will remain frozen at $4 billion until 2022, and is now at its lowest level ever as a share of the budget — 0.23 percent of gross national income. Aid is also shifting toward the Pacific, with plans to open a new embassy in Tuvalu.

• Border Security: Security at airports, international mail centers and air cargo facilities will be strengthened over four years as part of a comprehensive $293.6 million package of new initiatives.

• Immigration Support: Migrants will have to wait four years, up from three, to access welfare payments, saving the government $200 million over five years.

So what does this all add up to?

At first glance, it looked to me like a Trumpian shift — or at least a continued slide away from treating the world as a stage of opportunity and toward a focus on global threats.

I checked that premise with a few experts to see if I was reading the numbers right.

“Yes I think the budget reflects a shift towards a more uneasy, less confident and more defensive view of the world,” said Hugh White, a prominent defense strategist who recently wrote a lengthy essay on Australia’s global role. “Hence we have seen the militarisation of our foreign policy and the securitisation of our immigration policy.”

The context is striking. Australia is strong not weak, in its 27th year of economic growth, with a government surplus on the way and an economy nearly as large as Russia’s.

According to the Lowy Institute’s new Asia Power Index, Australia is the sixth most powerful country in Asia, behind Russia and ahead of South Korea.

But by 2030, it is projected to slide the economic rankings and instead of pushing itself and its values further into the world, as China, Indonesia and Japan are doing, Australia still seems more interested in circling the wagons and seeking protection.

“This is also reflected very plainly in the growing worries about China,” Mr. White said. “Where once it was seen overwhelmingly as a source of economic opportunity it is now seen more and more as a source of political, strategic and even ideological threats.”

Some analysts argue that there is still a lot of diplomatic work and “soft power” in the mix.

Jacinta Carroll, director of national security policy at the Australian National University, defended the budget’s foreign policy priorities, noting that they fall in line with the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper, and include a greater focus on Australia’s closest neighbors in the Pacific.

“It’s rare to see a new High Commission open, but a permanent diplomatic presence is vital to a strong relationship so it’s great news that Australia’s commitment to the Pacific is being strengthened by a permanent diplomatic post in Tuvalu,” she said.

Still, the Pacific focus is also in response to a perceived threat from China. And a good portion of that aid will go to security, not development or investment.

The United States and many other countries have made a similar shift. We’re in the midst of a moment when many of the world’s strongest democracies are looking inward, or investing in bonds centered around security. In a previous interview, Mr. White tied this to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but what I find interesting is how that mood of fear is adapting and finding new sources of anxiety.

“You have to worry, if this approach stressing defense and not foreign aid is a good one, given we don’t face any military threat,” said Stephen Howes, director of the Development Policy Centre at the Australian National University “It doesn’t seem to be a balanced approach.”

In the long run, maybe the shift will be seen as prescient. My colleague, David E. Sanger, has a new book coming out called “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.” The impact of technology alone, to say nothing of entropic geopolitics, could eventually justify more spending on security and defense.

But having seen the way a resort to the American military often becomes the default response for foreign policy matters in many countries all over the world, I also wonder about momentum, and whether spending choices today might create self-fulfilling prophecies of conflict tomorrow.

As I wrote in one of my first articles about Australian-American relations, when you’re making a lot hammers, at what point does everything look like a nail?

Now for the news — from Trump and Iran to koala chlamydia and Met Gala fun — as well as a recommendation.

As always, if you like what we’re up to, tell your friends to sign up for this newsletter, send feedback to [email protected] and join us in our Facebook group for more discussion.

Underscoring my point above, President Trump’s decision to pull out of the nuclear deal with Iran jettisons a deal in favor of a return to tension and potential conflict.

Why do it? Mr. Trump and his Middle East allies are betting, with great risk, that they can cut Iran’s economic lifeline and thus “break the regime.”

The columnist Bret Stephens argues that the deal is worth abandoning, if the Trump administration follows through on its tough talk.

Nicole Perlroth, our cybersecurity reporter, also pointed out on Twitter a risk that’s often overlooked: “(Among other things), the deal has constrained Iranian state/contracted hackers. By all accounts if @POTUS dismantles the deal, we can expect an extreme onslaught of Iranian cyberattacks.”

______

Declan Walsh recently returned to Benghazi, but rather than tell that story as a traditional newspaper tale, he turned to our new more visual format.

The result is engrossing, illuminating and jarring. We’re also looking for visual stories to tell from Australia and the region with this new story tool, so send us suggestions if you have them.

______

Great visuals, of course, need not come only from war zones. I spent far too much time clicking through the slide shows of elaborate fashion from this year’s Met Gala in New York.

• Thomas L. Friedman laments the lack of conversation across ideological lines, in both China and the United States. “If the Chinese are afraid to talk to one another,” he writes, “in America we’ve forgotten how to talk to one another.”

• Michael Albertus and Victor Menaldo explore why democracies are breaking down, citing Myanmar as “a prime example of how outgoing authoritarian regimes can game democracy in their favor.”

• Bari Weiss meets and greets a group of American heretics making an end run around the strictures of mainstream conversation, including Christina Hoff Sommers, and tries to examine their appeal. What do they tell us about political discourse and where it’s heading?

______

And We Recommend …

I sometimes read alongside my children, using their school assignments as a way to learn about Australia, so when my son mentioned “Storm Boy” by Colin Thiele, I was intrigued.

I found a copy at a local bookstore and nearly wept when I reached the story’s end. Timeless writing, touching tale — I can see why it’s a classic.

Damien Cave is the new Australia bureau chief for The New York Times. He’s covered more than a dozen countries for The Times, including Mexico, Cuba, Iraq and Lebanon. Follow him on Twitter: @damiencave.

The post Australia Is Rich, Strong and Afraid of the World appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2K7xbNB via Online News

#World News #Today News #Daily News #Breaking News #News Headline #Entertainment News #Sports news #Sci-Tech

0 notes

cleopatrarps · 6 years