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wifelinkmtg · 8 months

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So let's say you grew up in the nineties and that The Lion King was an important movie to you. Let's say that the character of Scar - snarling, ambitious, condescending, effeminate Scar - stirred feelings in you which you had no words for as a child. And then let's say, many years later, you're talking about it with a college friend, and you say something like, "oh man, I think Scar was some sort of gay awakening for me," and she fixes you with this level stare and says, "Scar was a fascist. What's the matter with you?"

The immediate feeling is not unlike missing a step: hang on, what's happening, what did I miss? You knew there were goose-stepping hyenas in "Be Prepared," but you didn't think it mattered that much. He's the bad guy, after all, and the movie's just pointing it out. Your friend says it's more than that: the visuals of the song are directly referencing the Nuremberg rallies. They're practically an homage to Riefenstahl. This was your sexual awakening? Is this why you're so into peaked caps and leather, then? Subliminal nazi kink, perhaps?

And then one of your other friends cuts in. "Hold up," he says, "let's think about what Scar actually did in the movie. He organized a group of racialized outcasts and led them against a predatory monarchy. Why are you so keen to defend their hereditary rule? Scar's the good guy here." The conversation immediately descends into a verbal slap fight about who the real bad guy is, whether Scar's regime was actually responsible for the ecological devastation of the Pride Lands, whether the hyenas actually count as "racialized" because James Earl Jones voiced Mufasa after all. Your Catholic friend starts saying some strange and frankly concerning shit about Natural Law. Someone brings The Lion King 2 into it. You leave the conversation feeling a little bit lost and a little bit anxious. What were we even talking about?

INTRODUCING: THE DITCH

There is a way of reading texts which I'm afraid is pervasive, which has as its most classical expression the smug obsession with trivia and minutiae you find in a certain vein of comic book fan. "Who was the first Green Lantern? What was his weakness? Do you even know the Green Lantern Oath?" It eschews the subjective in favor of definitively knowable fact. You can't argue with this guy that, say, Alan Scott shouldn't really count as the first Green Lantern because his whole deal is so radically different from the Hal Jordan/John Stewart/Guy Gardner Corps-era Lanterns, because this guy will simply say "but he's called Green Lantern. Says so right on the cover. Checkmate." This approach to reading a text is fundamentally 1) emotionally detached (there's a reason the joke goes, oh you like X band? name three of their songs - and not, which of their songs means the most to you? which of them came into your life at exactly the right moment to tell you exactly what you needed to hear just then?) and 2) defensive. It's a stance that is designed not to lose arguments. It says so right on the cover. Checkmate.

And then you get the guys who are like "well obviously Bruce Wayne could do far more as a billionaire to solve societal problems by using his tremendous wealth to address systemic issues instead of dressing up as a bat and punching mental patients in the head," and these guys have half a point but they're basically in the same ditch butting heads with the "well, actually" guys, and can we not simply extricate ourselves from the ditch entirely?

So, okay, let's return to our initial example. Scar is portrayed using Nazi iconography - the goose-stepping, the monumentality, the Nuremberg Lichtdom. He is also flamboyant and effete. He unifies and leads a group of downtrodden exiles to overthrow an absolute monarch. He's also a self-serving despot on whose rule Heaven Itself turns its back. You can't reconcile these things from within the ditch - or if you can, the attempt is likely to be ad-hoc supposition and duct tape.

Instead, let's ask ourselves what perspective The Lion King is coming from. What does it say is true about the world? What are its precepts, its axioms?

There is a natural hierarchical order to the world. This is just and righteous and the way of things, and attempts to overthrow this order will be punished severely by the world itself.

Fascism is what happens when evil men attempt to usurp this natural order with the aid of a group or groups of people who refuse to accept their place in the order.

There exists an alternative to defending and adhering to one's place in the natural order - it consists only of selfish spineless apathy.

Manliness is an essential quality of a just ruler. Unmanliness renders a person unfit for rule, and often resentful and dangerous as well.

And isn't that interesting, laid out like that? It renders the entire argument about the movie irrelevant (except for whatever your Catholic friend was on about, since his understanding of the world seems to line up with the above precepts weirdly well.) It's meaningless to argue about whether Scar was a secret hero or a fascist, when the movie doesn't understand fascism and has a damn-near alien view of what good and evil are.

There's always gonna be someone who, having read this far, wants to reply, "so, what? The Lion King is a bad movie and the people who made it were homophobes and also American monarchists, somehow? And anyone who likes it is also some sort of gay-bashing crypto-authoritarian?" To which I have to reply, man, c'mon, get out of the ditch. You're no good to anyone in there. Take my hand. I'm going to pull on three. One... two...

SO PHYREXIA [PAUSE FOR APPLAUSE, GROANS]

We're talking about everyone's favorite ichor-drooling surgery monsters again because there was a bit in my ~*~seminal~*~ essay Transformation, Horror, Eros, Phyrexia which seemed to give a number of readers quite a bit of trouble: namely, the idea that while Phyrexia is textually fascist, their aesthetic is incompatible with real-world fascism, and further, that this aesthetic incompatibility in some way outweighs the ways in which they act like a fascist nation in terms of how we think of them. I'll take responsibility here: I don't think that point is at all clear or well-argued in that essay. What I was trying to articulate was that the text of Magic: the Gathering very much wants Phyrexia to be supremely evil and dangerous fascists, because that makes for effective antagonists, but in the process of constructing that, it's accidentally encoded a whole bunch of fascinating presuppositions that end up working at cross-purposes with its apparent aim. That's... not that much clearer, is it? Hmm. Why don't I just show you what I mean?

Atraxa, Grand Unifier (art by Marta Nael)

In "Beneath Eyes Unblinking," one of the March of the Machine stories by K. Arsenault Rivera, there's a fascinating and I think revealing passage in which Atraxa (big-deal Phyrexianized angel and Elesh Norn's lieutenant) has a run-in with an art museum in New Capenna. The first thing I want to talk about is that, in this passage, Atraxa has no understanding of the concept of "beauty". A great deal of space in such a rushed storyline is devoted to her trying to puzzle out what beauty means and interrogating the minds of her recently-compleated Capennan aesthetes to try and understand it. In the end, she is unable to conceive of beauty except as "wrongness," as anathema.

So my first question is, why doesn't Atraxa have any idea of beauty? This is nonsense, right? We could point to a previous story, "A Garden of Flesh," by Lora Gray, in which Elesh Norn explicitly thinks in terms of beauty, but that's a little bit ditchbound, isn't it? The better argument is to simply look at Phyrexian bodies, at the Phyrexian landscape, all of which looks the way it does on purpose, all of which has been shaped in accordance with the very real aesthetic preferences of Phyrexians. How you could look at the Fair Basilica and not understand that Phyrexians most definitely have an idea of beauty, even if you personally disagree with it, is baffling. This is a lot like the canonical assertion that Phyrexians lack souls, which is both contradicted elsewhere in canon and essentially meaningless, given Magic's unwillingness or inability to articulate what a soul is in its setting, and as with this, it seems the goal is simply to dehumanize Phyrexians, to render them alien, even at the cost of incoherence or internal contradiction.

Atraxa's progress through the museum is fascinating. It evokes the 1937 Nazi exhibit on "degenerate art" in Munich, but not at all cleanly. The first exhibit, which is of representational art, she angrily destroys for being too individualistic (a point of dissonance with the European fascist movements of the 20th century, which formed in direct antagonism to communism.) The second exhibit, filled with abstract paintings and sculptures, she destroys even more angrily for having no conceivable use (this is much more in line with the Nazi idea of "degenerate art", so well done there.) The third exhibit is filled with war trophies and reconstructions from a failed Phyrexian invasion of Capenna many years prior, which she is angriest of all with (and fair enough, I suppose.) But then, after she's done completely trashing the place, she spots a number of angel statues on the cathedral across the plaza, and she goes apeshit. In a fugue of white-hot rage, she pulverizes the angel heads, and here is where I have to ask my second question:

Why angels? If you are trying to invoke fascist attitudes toward art, big statues of angels are precisely the wrong thing for your fascist analogues to hate. Fascists love monumental, heroic representations of superhuman perfection. It's practically their whole aesthetic deal. I understand that we're foreshadowing the imminent defeat of Phyrexia at the hands of legions of angels and a multiversal proliferation of angel juice, but that just leads to the exact same question: why angels? To the best of my knowledge, the Phyrexian weakness to New Capennan angel juice is something invented for this storyline. They have, after all, been happily compleating angels since 1997. We could talk about the in-universe justification for why Halo specifically is so potent, but I don't remember what that justification is, and also don't care. Let's not jump back in the ditch, please. The point is, someone decided that this time, Phyrexia would be defeated by an angelic host, and what does that mean? What is the text trying to say? What are its precepts and axioms?

Let me ask you a question: how many physically disabled angels are there in Magic: the Gathering? How about transsexual angels? How many angels are there, on all of the cards that have ever been printed for Magic: the Gathering, that are even just a bit ugly? Do you get it yet? Or do you need me to spell it out for you?

SPELLING IT OUT FOR YOU

There is a kind of body which is bad. It is bad because it has been significantly altered from its natural state, and it is bad because it is repellent to our aesthetic sensibilities.

The bad kind of body is contagious. It spreads through contact. Sometimes people we love are infected, and then they become the bad kind of body too.

There is a kind of body which is good. It is good because it is pleasing to our aesthetic sensibilities, and it is good because it is unaltered from its (super)natural state.

A happy ending is when all the good bodies destroy or drive into hiding all of the bad bodies. A happy ending is when the bad bodies of the people we love are forcibly returned to being the good kind of body.

Do you get it now?

ENDNOTES

It's worth noting that the ditch is very similar to the white American Evangelical hermeneutics of "the Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it," the defensive chapter-and-verse-or-it-didn't-happen approach to reading a text, what Fred Clark of slacktivist calls "concordance-ism". I don't think that's accidental. We stand underneath centuries of people reading the Bible very poorly - how could that not affect how we read things today? We are participants in history whether we like it or not.

I sincerely hope I haven't come across as condescending in this essay. Close reading is legitimately difficult! They teach college courses on this stuff! And while it is frustrating to have my close readings interrogated by people who... aren't doing that, like. I do get it. I find myself back in the ditch all the time. This stuff is hard. It is also, sorry, crucial if you intend to say something about a text that's worth saying.

I also hope I've communicated clearly here. Magic story is sufficiently incoherent that trying to develop a thesis about it often feels like trying to nail jello to the wall. If anyone has questions, please ask them! And thank you for reading. Next time, we'll probably do the new Eldraine set.

#phyrexia #not defining the ditch except by implication #thanks to all the very smart vorthoi on the flavor text discord server for helping me work through my thoughts on fascism and phyrexia #this is technically the march of the machine review also #or as much of one as i care to do

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willowser · 1 month

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HMMMMMM interesting to think about arranged marriage with prince shouto...............

i think he wouldn't know. what to expect with you. i think he'd have an idea, as in, what his father, the king, has taught him; the duties of a wife, where your importance ranks in relation to his duties. what he's not meant to discuss with you, like politics and matters at court and foreign relations. how you will speak to him. what to buy in the event that you become...unhappy. a nuisance.

("and she will," enji had muttered, briefly glancing up from the parchment on his desk to fix shouto with a look he didn't understand. "they always do.")

you don't meet until the royal wedding, when you're coming down the long aisle of the grand cathedral, dressed up in a swathe of silk and lace. a thin, gossamer veil hides you from him, but he can feel the ardor in your eyes, the intensity burning through the material. it doesn't seem real until your bare face is only a breath from his own, until he has to see the earnestness in your stare, too.

your kiss is simple and chaste, nothing spectacular, something that leaves his mind as soon as it's over. ever a todoroki, a hundred other things enter his mind, all regarding his now iron-laid obligations: it's vital he meet with advisor keigo to reiterate the plan to establish his authority among the council; general aizawa is in attendance to the wedding, and shouto has not yet received word on his opinion of the new king's ideas to modernize their armed forces; midoriya is somewhere, no doubt wanting to go over state affairs again.

truthfully, shouto doesn't spend long "celebrating". there's already too much that's required of him, hardly enough time to even scarf down a few bites of the banquet laid out before he's being chartered off into discussions on foreign relations and infrastructure development. maybe once or twice does he look back to check on you, chatting pleasantly with his mother and sister at the front of the great hall, and that's satisfying enough.

it's not until much later that he sees you again; freshly bathed and wearing something sheer and long and white, atop his bed.

or his marriage bed, he must remind himself.

enji didn't spend long going over consummation, with him or either of his brothers—natsuo, red-faced and annoyed at the very subject, always storming off, and touya had seemed well-aware of the process, at the time (back before he'd been ex-communicated). it had sounded simple: strip off your dress, get his cock out and into you, and only retreat once he was sure his seed had been spilled.

—so he's not exactly sure what to do or think or how to feel, when you're laid bare and reaching up to hold his face.

it's so startling that he sits back on his knees, to frown where he's looming over you.

you stare at him quietly, like you're expecting him to say something, and he only has a moment to wonder if this is you becoming an unhappy nuisance—what had been the answer, to solve this, anyway?—before you let out a soft laugh.

"c'mere," you tell him, sitting up, too, when he keeps his distance. "i want you to kiss me."

"i already have."

"yes," you laugh again, amusement glowing in your eyes, like the warmth off the fireplace, as you reach for the ties on his trousers. "but you're meant to do it again."

and up until then, he'd felt confident in his achievements, his executions; he'd managed a lot today, in one evening, and he had a lifetime to manage more. it was a good a start as any, he'd thought, but now—

shouto almost can't get the words out when he feels your hands ghosting up the inside of his shirt, nails tickling over his ribs. "a-am i?"

you wrap your arms around his waist in what could be a hug, scooting forward to look up at him with your chin against his chest. "yes," you smile and—it's familiar in a way, how touya would whenever he was teasing. "you're my husband, you're meant to kiss me whenever i want."

that—was not something his father had ever said, he was sure, and it was a too-rare exchange between his own parents. now that he thinks about it—and he does, then, because he's faced with the reality that he doesn't know as much as he should—he's not sure the former king and queen even sleep in the same room, much less the same bed.

much less hug and touch and even smile, the way you do now.

there's no argument he can make against it, aside from finding keigo to find his father to verify the truth to such a statement, and he's only meant to retreat from this bed on one condition.

and if this is what it takes to meet that—then shouto supposes he'll have to do it, for now. he's a brand new king, after all, and it would seem he still has much to learn.

#i just really like the idea of shouto being raised to be like #alright. meet with advisors. council meeting. get married. consummate. find general aizawa.#like it's just another stepping stone #to be married #and you are very much like oh 😊🩷 my husband 😊🩷#and he's SOOOO thrown by that #that's not how he was taught it would go LOL #and you want to hug and kiss and hold hands 🥺#if he spends too long in meetings you take the dinner from the royal dining table and march right into that room #to have dinner with your husband god damn it #LOL #and maybe he even asks his mom like 'is this right ???' and she's like #yeah 🥺🥺 it is 🥺🥺#and then he finds this weird odd unexpected happiness with you that he was never taught to expect 🥺#✿ thoughts: shouto #✿ willow writes

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