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canyourfavesurvivecastledracula · 27 days

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Would T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics / Qwantz comics by Ryan North survive?

I feel like this is in large part going to be based on whether or not t-rex blood is vamp food & if t-rexs can be mind controlled??? Might come down to an actual fight.

T-Rex probably stomps on the woman with a crucifix, but he doesn't shave, so probably ok. He does have a personal friendship with both God & Satan though?

T-Rex is not great at social niceties, so I don't know if Dracula will want him around for very long, but T-Rex is also a dinosaur so I don't know if Dracula can actually get him to leave. Maybe they bond over being apex predators???

T-Rex can definitely not climb (those lil arms!), but he might be able to out predator the wolves & eat them.

I am going to apologize in advance for the fact that I just do not possess the philosophical education or terminology to give this subject the treatment it deserves. When it comes to philosophy, I possess the wisdom of Socrates: I know what I do not know. I know that the three characters of Dinosaur comics embody different philosophical archetypes. I know that T-rex's rhetorical style has a name, as does his axiology. I could not for the life of me tell you what they are. I remand the deeper analysis to Philosophy Side of Tumblr

Given the metaphysical reality of the comic strip, I think it is fair to understand T-rex as an ensoulled being, in which case his blood might be attractive to Dracula. I am not up to date on the scientific thinking around the penetrability of tyrannosaur skin, but they definitely don't osteoderms and I don't believe we have found any evidence of scutes or scales. We have also found zero evidence of feathers, despite looking really really hard, and so while the current understanding is that feathers on dinosaurs are the rule, not the exception, T. rex seems to have been exceptional. Which is moot because T-rex the character definitely lacks them. So I am going to say that Dracula can physically bite T-rex and has a tentative interest in so doing.

T-rex has a strong interest in religion on a philosophical level, but he is definitely not Anglican. He would accept the crucifix specifically to argue with Utahraptor over whether or not it was idolatrous - though I don't think the townsfolk would offer it given all the stepping on dudes and houses he gets up to. And as you say, he doesn't shave. He also has no need of mirrors, as he already knows how cool and sexy he is.

On that level, I think he would be difficult for Dracula to psychologically torment. Now, while it is true that Jonathan Harker also goes into Castle Dracula already knowing how cool and sexy he is, and that provides him some level of protection, he's just not on T-rex's level. I would venture that not even Zaphod Beeblebrox is on T-rex's level, which is impressive because Zaphod literally has an ego the size of the entire universe. I don't think T-rex can be gaslit, because he would enthusiastically take any doubts about his own sanity as a jumping off point for philosophical examination and possibly epistemology. He probably is susceptible to Brain Fever. When Ornithomimus finds him in Budapest he doesn't know who he is but he knows his genitals are GREAT.

The main source of conflict will be that both T-rex and Dracula really like hearing themselves talk. I don't think Dracula would be very pleased slipping into the role of Utahraptor and letting T-rex take the lead - and T-rex can't stop being the thing that he is any more than Dracula can. If they can work out a mutually satisfying conversational structure, I think T-rex could keep Dracula entertained indefinitely. He would definitely have thoughts about changing attitudes towards violent conquest. They might discuss the nature of the soul and the extent to which treating it as transactional (eg in Faust) is compatible with Christian teaching, or whether you can be damned without your own participation (say, by being turned into a vampire). T-rex may be curious about dabbling in vampirism provided he can do so temporarily - which, given T-rex, he is confident he can.

T-rex definitely cannot climb down the wall with those itty bitty arms. He probably can't fit through the window. On the other hand I am not sure walls can contain him (there are no walls in the comic save on the stomped cabin). I do not think he would be deterred by Dracula's doors or his wolves.

So I think T-rex of Dinosaur Comics can survive Castle Dracula, and raise some very interesting questions while he's there

Unrelatedly, the @wheresjonno project last summer ended up giving Jonathan Harker a pet T. rex named Hamlet, but she's an entirely different character who doesn't fit in the London Underground. Nevertheless.

#qwantz #dinosaur comics #t-rex #animals #webcomics

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nastasya--filippovna · 5 months

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WHO IS CROWLEY AFTER THE FALL?

so there is a LOT of debate over who Crowley was before The Fall. I have seen a lot of headcanons going around the place saying he was Raphael or Kokabiel or Baraqiel.

I mean this is the Exhibit A for saying that Crowley is Baraqiel. I think NOT.

Because this is a handbook written by demons for demons. The title is literally (if my memory serves me right) a guide to angelic beings that walk the earth. SO Crowley is not That..

Other than the red hair thing, no other physical characteristic matches. This Baraqiel guy sounds like an absolute gremlin. grisly slug, occasionally damp. NOT CROWLEY. I mean she's the most dashing thing around.

NO. #3 It says CROWLEY one line above the name Baraqiel. If Crowley is Baraqiel then why would his demon name appear right under that?????

And I think somewhere Neil Gaiman refuted this theory (I'm not really sure but I think so plz don't come at me with pitchforks if I got it wrong). So.......

But this is all beside the point. What I'm trying to say is that too much has been said about who Crowley was before he fell. There is very little, if not none, that has been said about who he was After.

Some say that he's an insignificant demon or some loser guy in Hell or whatever the equivalent of an angel principality deputy on Earth is.

I BEG TO DIFFER.

He is Important. Just look at the kind of assignments he's given. Original Sin, Major Historical Temptations and Evil Acts, Delivering the Antichrist and bringing about Armageddidn't.

But who is he exactly??????????

So canonically we're never told what Crowley's rank in Hell is. But there are more that enough hints for us to figure that out for ourselves.

But where does one place him when the hierarchy is so complex and varying across different historical and theological sources.

Such as here:

I have been thinking about this and I have two current theories

Crowley is Astaroth

Crowley is The Leviathan

I'll discuss only one in this post. I'll save the other for the next post.

Now book!Omens clearly tells us that Crowley or Crawley is not his real demonic name. For those who haven't read the book this happens when Hastur Lavista and Ligur come to hand over the antichrist to Crowley in the churchyard and as he's about to sign his name as "Crowley" they tell him to sign his real demonic name.

Are you with me?!!!!!

NANNY ASHTORETH!

Why did she use this particular name for her nanny disguise. What if...... what if this IS her real demon name.

A lot of my real life friends are annoyed beyond measure by my constant ranting about etymologies, origin and construction of discourse and epistemology, especially when it comes to presenting my thesis over how all Abrahamic religions and their symbology and iconography is, how do I put it, inspired from pagan religions that they expunged. I mean the concept of angles, the man shaped being with wings that is actually just a ball of fire or eyes or hale discs or sth is a pagan Persian concept.

Back to the matter at hand.

Ashtoreth, Astaroth, Astarte, Ishtar, are all the same name in different dialects and languages. All of these refer to a certain Babylonian goddess. When the People of God probably cleansed off all the infidels they decided to literally demonize their god and name a demon after her. In Milton's Paradise Lost Astaroth is one of the three princes or Grand Dukes of Hell alongside Beelz and Lucifer. If this theory might be true Crowley is a Prince/Grand Duke of Hell.

Now this gets even more interesting. Ashtoreth, Astarte, whatever you may, is a goddess of fertility and is associated with childcare. I mean at this point I just stopped to marvel at the attention to detail that Mr. Gaiman's work hold, the smallest hidden meanings in the storytelling.

Another thing. The Babylonians built these temples called ziggurats to worship Astarte and they looked something like this

and this

they were also known as sky temples.

Because Astaroth was first and foremost the goddess of stars and the Babylonians were stargazers and the temples were constructed as a stairway to heaven to take them closer to the stars and functioned as an observatory at times.

I'm just imagining Crowley turning up in ancient Babylon and with her other-worldly looks, knowledge of the stars and compassion for children they just..... started to worship her.

Before the Christians came and declared them pagans and the rest is history.

Continued in next post for the second theory......

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transmutationisms · 9 months

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what are your thoughts on fishers capitalist realism and how do you think it’s useful as a framework?

fisher is useful for pointing out that the realist attitude toward capitalism is neither inevitable nor transhistorical---ie, that it takes a massive economic effort to maintain capitalism just as it takes a massive superstructural cultural effort to maintain belief in its efficacy and necessity. specifically, fisher was theorising the way capital is presented as over-and-above human agency in the neoliberal epistemology, which doesn't tend to appeal to god or a divine right of kings in the way that eg 18th-century european capitalists did. what 'capitalist realism' helps elucidate is that, even in this neoliberal order that is often presented as being efficient, rationalised, & stripped of metaphysics, we are still being fed a trick whereby an immanently created social force is paraded around as a transcendent truth of human existence. the corollary is of course that revolution is possible and capitalism can topple.

that said, this type of analysis really wants more historicisation than fisher provided (the foucault problem) and i also find that the book's weakest points come in his analyses (polemics, really) on the psychological effects of capitalist society. these lines are often quoted and usually snappy, but they're not really grounded on much (again, many of his assertions demand historicisation) and are frequently extremely narrowly focussed on middle-class white-collar workers---which, a) haven't we heard enough about this demographic at this point and b) he'll try to extrapolate from there to a general analysis, like when he jumps from observations of his own university students to assertions about the general psychological cost of neoliberalism---but can we really assume the alienation of a 19 y/o uni student (who probably still has more access than the average person to upward economic mobility) is the same as, or generalisable to, the alienation of all working poor? i also think fisher had some reactionary tendencies that you can see in, for example, the way he talked about 'depressive anhedonia' and what that reveals about his attitude toward pleasure. many such cases on the academic left.

#mark fisher

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foursaints · 6 months

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ok the topic of barty crouch jr and the bone motif came up, but his specific phrasing here is what really sticks in my brain & is the basis of my stance on barty’s story as an allegory for bodily autonomy. yes there is something obviously satisfying in a character who spent 12 years under imperius, his body used a puppet, choosing to murder his abuser through transfiguration rather than a more conventional method like the killing curse. this is the only instance of death-by-transfiguration in the series. but i think the way he phrases this (became a bone, not ‘turned into’) belies a deeper understanding of barty’s relationship to having a body in general.

barty crouch being denied bodily autonomy goes far deeper than the imperius curse. i see it as sort of a haunting refrain that characterizes his entire life actually. he goes from servitude, to imprisonment, to switching bodies with his mother, to the imperius curse (kept under an invisibility cloak— he can’t even see himself), to the polyjuice potion, to that ironic “death” by the dementor’s kiss; his body goes on without his soul. it’s worth noting that the only time barty appears on-page as himself his body is controlled (yet again!) and forced to speak under veristaserum. do you think there was a strange comfort in that, for him? i just mean that he’s never known anything else.

i want to look at this through a hypochondriacal lens, where the experience of having a body (or being embodied) is a contestatory relationship wherein the mind strives for order/structure/immutability but the body is inescapable— it brings disorder, change, and a continual loss of control. the body is both fundamentally unknowable and hurtling towards death and illness: the hypochondriac seeks to rationalize & control this, but it’s ultimately an exercise in futility. i see these anxieties really present in barty crouch jr’s character: someone whose body has been puppeted or transformed into a different shape more than it has actually been his own.

i’m not saying that barty IS a hypochondriac (he’s not), but that his character arc functions inside the same epistemological framework: one where the unruly body is a prison because of how it’s subject to/harbinger of continual change. but this relies on a really clear division of the body and mind as separate entities. or even, like, a division between the body and this more ephemeral idea of “the self”— a soul that resides in the body but is somehow separate from it (and we know the soul is canon in the world of harry potter). barty crouch collapses this dichtonomy in a really interesting way with his statement: his father became a bone. as in, he is no longer himself and he is just that bone now. barty is introducing the idea that the soul doesn’t really matter or even exist, and that once your body takes the shape of something you fundamentally are that thing, for better or worse.

and i don’t know! this strikes me, especially coming from a man who has lived twelve years as an empty vessel— why would he believe in a soul if his has been erased and overwritten so many times? his own sense of self is too stifled and warped and stunted. this is the same character who was able to embody moody so fully and convincingly that it was impossible for even dumbledore to tell the difference. i think this was possible because of barty’s weird relationship to embodiment, where his actual “self” is hazy and loosely defined— perhaps the result of so many years having it denied, stifled, or unable to develop— but he becomes whatever shape his body is taking. (it’s interesting to note, too, that barty didn’t say that he transfigured his father. rather, he “transfigured [his father’s] body”, and this was enough for his identity to dissipate and him to become something else). to barty, the “self” is not an independent entity that is subject to the body’s change and disorder— his “self” is the very body itself, and all the fear, and change, and loss of control that comes with it.

this is why the ending with the dementor’s kiss gets me so bad. if the body is all he really is, then this fate is the perfect closure. barty is finally reduced to all he has ever been: erased. an empty vessel. just the image of himself, with nothing inside it. what’s really changed?

#t #barty crouch jr #how do i even tag this. mucho texto #UNDERSTANDERS WILL UNDERSTAND!#barty meta tag

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 9 days

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By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Apr 18, 2024

“Why do you think the giraffe has a long neck?” says the naturalist Philip Henry Gosse to his son Edmund while he tucks him up into bed. “Does it have a long neck so that it can eat the leaves at the top of the tree? Or does it eat the leaves at the top of the tree because it has a long neck?”

“Does it matter?” says Edmund.

“A great deal, my son.”

This exchange is taken from Dennis Potter’s wonderful television play Where Adam Stood (1976), a loose adaptation of Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son (1907). Gosse’s book must rank among the very best of autobiographies. It is his account of being raised by his father Philip, one of Darwin’s close contemporaries, a man whose faith in the Bible was so fervent that the revelations of natural selection almost destroyed him.

The question about the giraffes is Potter’s invention, but it adroitly captures the profound inner struggle of this scientist who had devoted his life to a belief-system that was suddenly falling apart. It wasn’t just a matter of changing his mind as new evidence emerged, because the proposition that the earth’s age could be numbered in the billions rather than the thousands was not something that his faith could accommodate. The stumbling block was the Bible, a point that Edmund is quick to acknowledge in his book:

“My Father’s attitude towards the theory of natural selection was critical in his career, and oddly enough, it exercised an immense influence on my own experience as a child. Let it be admitted at once, mournful as the admission is, that every instinct in his intelligence went out at first to greet the new light. It had hardly done so, when a recollection of the opening chapter of Genesis checked it at the outset. He consulted with Carpenter, a great investigator, but one who was fully as incapable as himself of remodelling his ideas with regard to the old, accepted hypotheses. They both determined, on various grounds, to have nothing to do with the terrible theory, but to hold steadily to the law of the fixity of species.”

Philip Gosse had an instinct for scientific enquiry, but the new discoveries simply could not be reconciled with his holy text. His whole being was invested in the Biblical truth, and to cast that in doubt would be to undermine the crux of his being. To admit that he might have been wrong, in this particular instance, would be a form of spiritual death.

Both Gosse’s memoir and Potter’s dramatisation grapple with what Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay (in their book How to Have Impossible Conversations) call an “identity quake”, the “emotional reaction that follows from having one’s core values disrupted”. Their point is that when arguing with those who see the world in an entirely different way, we must be sensitive to the ways in which certain ideas constitute an aspect of our sense of self. In such circumstances, to dispense with a cherished viewpoint can be as traumatic as losing a limb.

The concept of identity quakes helps us to understand the extreme political tribalism of our times. It isn’t simply that the left disagrees with the right, but that to be “left-wing” has become integral to self-conceptualisation. How often have we seen “#FBPE” or “anti-Tory” in social media bios? These aren’t simply political affiliations; they are defining aspects of these people’s lives. This is also why so many online disputes seem to be untethered from reason; many are following a set of rules established by their “side”, not thinking for themselves. When it comes to fealty to the cause, truth becomes irrelevant. We are no longer dealing with disputants in an argument, but individuals who occupy entirely different epistemological frameworks.

Since the publication of the Cass Review, we have seen countless examples of this kind of phenomena. Even faced with the evidence that “gender-affirming” care is unsafe for children, those whose identity has been cultivated in the gender wars will find it almost impossible to accept the truth. Trans rights activists have insisted that “gender identity” is a reality, and their “allies” have been the most strident of all on this point. As an essentially supernatural belief, it should come as no surprise that it has been insisted on with such vigour, and that those who have attempted to challenge this view have been bullied and demonised as heretics.

Consider the reaction from Novara Media, a left-wing independent media company, which once published some tips on how to deceive a doctor into prescribing cross-sex hormones. Novara has claimed that “within hours of publication” the Cass Review had been “torn to shreds”. Like all ideologues, they are invested in a creed, and it just so happens that the conviction that “gender identity” is innate and fixed (and simultaneously infinitely fluid) has become a firm dogma of the identity-obsessed intersectional cult.

Identity quakes will be all the more seismic within a movement whose members have elevated “identity” itself to hallowed status. When tax expert Maya Forstater sued her former employers for discrimination due to her gender-critical beliefs in 2019, one of the company’s representatives, Luke Easley, made a revealing declaration during the hearing. “Identity is reality,” he said, “without identity there’s just a corpse”.

This sentiment encapsulates the kind of magical thinking that lies at the core of the creed. So while it becomes increasingly obvious that gender identity ideology is a reactionary force that represents a direct threat to the rights of women and gay people, there will be many who simply will not be able to admit it. In Easley’s terms, if their entire identity is based on a lie, only “a corpse” remains. From this perspective, to abandon one’s worldview is tantamount to suicide.

This determination to hold fast to one’s views, even when the evidence mounts up against them, is known as “belief perseverance”. It is a natural form of psychological self-defence. After all, there is a lot at stake for those who have supported and enabled the Tavistock Clinic and groups like Mermaids and Stonewall. Many of the cheerleaders have encouraged the transitioning of children, sometimes their own. What we have known for years has now been confirmed: many of these young people will have been autistic, or will have simply grown up to be gay. For people to admit that they supported the sterilisation of some of the most vulnerable in society would be to face a terrible reality.

This idea was summarised in parliament on Monday by Victoria Atkins, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Addressing Labour MP Wes Streeting, she said:

“I welcome all those who have changed their minds about this critical issue. In order to move forward and get on with the vital work that Dr Cass recommends, we need more people to face up to the truth, no matter how uncomfortable that makes them feel. I hope the honourable gentleman has the humility to understand that the ideology that he and his colleagues espoused was part of the problem. He talked about the culture and the toxicity of the debate. Does he understand the hurt that he caused to people when he told them to ‘just get over it’? Does he know that when he and his friends on the left spent the last decade crying ‘culture wars’ when legitimate concerns were raised created an atmosphere of intimidation, with the impact on the workforce that he rightly described?”

youtube

It remains to be seen whether those politicians who failed to grapple with the implications of gender identity ideology, and who mindlessly accepted the misleading rhetoric of Stonewall and its allies, will have the humility to admit that they were wrong. Many culpable celebrities have been choosing to remain silent in recent days, while others have opted for outright denial. On the question of puberty blockers and their harm to children, television presenter Kirstie Allsop has made the remarkable claim that “it is, and always has been possible to debate these things and those saying there was no debate are wrong”. The concept of “no debate” was official Stonewall policy for many years, and has been a mantra for many within the trans activist movement. To suggest that there have been no attempts to stifle discussion on this subject can only be ignorance, mendacity or a remarkably acute form of amnesia.

Of course, the stakes could hardly be higher. We are dealing with complacency and ideological capture that had resulted in the sterilisation and castration of healthy young people. It is, without a doubt, one of the biggest medical scandals of our time. It is entirely understandable that those who have supported such terrible actions would enter a state of denial. And so we must also be sensitive to those who are now strong enough to admit that they were mistaken.

But we also need to prepare ourselves for the inevitable doubling down. There are those whose psyche cannot withstand the kind of identity quake that Philip Henry Gosse once suffered. His solution was to write a book explaining why God had left evidence of natural selection. It was called Omphalos (1857) – the Greek word for “navel” – and his thesis was that since Adam had no mother, his navel was merely an addition to generate the illusion of past that did not exist. The fossils that were being discovered in the ground were therefore no different than the rings in the first trees in the Garden of Eden. They weren’t evidence of age, but rather part of God’s poetical vision.

Some of the revisionism and excuses from gender ideologues are likely to be even more elaborate. They have invested too much in their fantasies to give up without a fight.

As gender identity ideology falls apart, we need to pay attention to who is working to fix the mistakes they made, who is doubling down, and who is remaining silent.

#Andrew Doyle #revisionism #gender ideology #gender identity ideology #queer theory #Cass report #Cass review #intersectional feminism #gender cult #medical scandal #medical mutilation #medical corruption #ideological capture #ideological corruption #religion is a mental illness

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max1461 · 2 months

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I actually disagree with @tsarina-anadyomene about the value of philosophy being illegible and difficult to articulate. I mean, I'm sure that's true of some philosophy. But it seems to me that most lines of philosophical inquiry are important for extremely straightforward reasons. Ethics is important because it's often hard to figure out the right thing to do is, or what that even means, and so it's useful to have a community of people thinking about it. Epistemology is important because distinguishing truth from falsity is a difficult problem and so it's useful to have a community of people thinking about it. Etc.

The "philosophy is useless navel gazing" STEM guy position doesn't strike me as subtly incorrect, it strikes me as straightforwardly idiotic. These guys hold all kinds of nontrivial convictions about epistemology and ethics, many of which they actually invoke in making the point that philosophy is nonsense, and which they usually just baldly assert instead of actually arguing for. They believe and aggressively evangelize philosophical claims while

insisting they are not doing philosophy, because philosophy is nonsense, and

refusing to engage with reasoned argument about the validity of their claims, because doing so would be philosophy and philosophy is nonsense.

There's no subtlety to why they're wrong, they're just being extremely stupid and embarrassing themselves.

Maybe the value in Schopenhauer is harder to see; maybe he's saying interesting or useful things but they take more work to get at for some reason (e.g. because they are set to a backdrop of epistemic or metaphysical claims that most modern people do not endorse, or something like that). I don't know, I've never read Schopenhauer. But the general anti-philosophy stance these guys have is so stupid as to not really be worth rebutting, and I do not think you need to work as hard as you do to argue for the validity of your endeavors.

Although, as an aside, I think the content of your arguments on this front is good in its own right and your various points are broadly well taken.

#navel gazing

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flyin-shark · 8 months

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thoughts on antitheism?

tldr: I agree with antitheism but I’m not very vocal about it since I don’t think that’s the best way to change minds.

I ended up writing a whole essay on this so prepare yourselves.

I think everyone should believe in as many true things and as few false things as possible. For that we need a reliable way or method of determining what’s true and what isn’t true. We should also not accept something as true or not true without first applying some methodology to it. Faith is not a reliable source of truth since you can believe in anything (including false things) using faith.

I think believing in a god is bad because you’re believing in something without sufficient evidence (unless you have sufficient evidence for god in which case a lot of people would love to see it including me).

But that’s more about why I’m an atheist than an antitheist. I think believing in a very basic god or a deistic god that just started the universe and did nothing else isn’t too problematic besides the fact that we don’t have enough evidence to accept that as true. Most theists however believe in some kind of god that has certain rules for everyone to follow. Often sending people to a certain afterlife depending on whether they met certain conditions or not. This can cause many problems.

I’m speaking from a Christian-centric standpoint so forgive me for not talking about other gods and religions. I think the concept of hell is abhorrent. Especially if you’re going to claim that your god is all-loving or omni-benevolent. No one should be tortured for eternity. Period. People grow up believing hell is real and often have nightmares about going there and being tortured just for having doubts, not forgiving someone, being lgbtq, or otherwise doing something ‘sinful’ that is actually just a normal human experience.

I’d argue that heaven isn’t good either. Imagine having to sing someone’s praises for all of eternity. Imagine supposedly existing in a state of pure bliss and happiness while knowing that billions of people are burning for eternity. Most of them being in hell simply for not believing the same god as you or any god at all. Feeling pure happiness while being aware of that fact is a contradiction to me.

I think a lot of things within Christianity that are taught as good things are actually not as good as they seem. Forgiveness seems like a good thing on the surface but consider that you don’t actually need to forgive anyone. Forgiving someone is what you do when you’re ready to put something behind you and move on. If someone harms you in a way that you can never trust them again then you aren’t obligated to forgive them. Forgiveness is for the victim to give at their discretion not anyone else. You shouldn’t feel ashamed for not being able to forgive someone. Also it’s strange to me that the person causing harm can ask god for forgiveness and be forgiven. God wasn’t involved. God wasn’t the victim. He has no standing to forgive anyone at all.

As I said at the beginning I agree with antitheism and I accept the label but I don’t usually use it. If you’re trying to change minds then I think there’s a few effective ways of doing that. Simply being a good person and an atheist can shake some people’s convictions since a lot of them are told that atheists can’t be good people. Another way is to focus on asking questions and “planting seeds” if you will. Asking what they think about hell, slavery, or specific contradictions in the Bible won’t make them stop believing immediately but it might make them start asking questions. Look into street epistemology.

Starting arguments with theists and immediately bringing up all of these points isn’t an effective strategy to me. It’s better to get to know the person and what they as an individual believe. You should find common ground and work from there. I should specify I’m just talking about talking to theists on an individual level. This isn’t a “debate in the marketplace of ideas” take.

In short, God is not love. God is a monster and it is morally virtuous to rebel against him. Good thing there’s no good reason to think he exists.

There’s a lot I probably forgot to mention here but anyway. I’m curious what everyone else thinks about the subject.

#shark sayin stuff #atheism #anti theism #skepticism

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psychotrenny · 2 months

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oh my god we get it you're a miserable white anglo in the imperial core masquerading as a radical by shitting on someone with more balls than you'll ever have, please show us o wise intellectual the proper ways to perform praxis

No, if this is your take away from this then you clearly do not "get it". If you're evaluation of how useful or radical an act is based entirely on how many "balls" it took then don't think you're qualified to be judging anyone else's opinion. My point is that self-immolation is a completely useless act; if he had done literally anything else (no matter how small) it would have had more effect. No individual action can achieve much of anything but stuff like donations or sit ins or (if we're talking suicidal acts) fragging your fucking CO have *some* sort of material effect, regardless of how small. Self-Immolation is literally useless. If 1000 USamericans all publically self-immolated tomorrow then it might be somewhat embarrassing but the biggest effect would be the time and labour it took to clean up their ashes. I keep talking about this because it's incredibly frustrating to see all these ostensible "leftists" treat this man like some sort of great hero because they're taken in by the symbolism of a US Soldier painfully killing himself in protest, while forgetting that these sorts of protests have never furthered literally any political cause. Also they're being awfully forgiving for a guy who had willing signed up to one of the most evil institutions on the planet; sure he felt bad about it eventually but you can't ignore the symbolic "help" of a guy who had done material harm

You also really seem to love focusing on the "White Imperial Core Anglo" as though that isn't also what this guy was or primarily the type of person I'm responding to (I've literally said that my problem is with the Western response; the Palestinians are in a desperate position so I'm in no position to criticise their response to whatever support is offered to them). Like if that sort of irritatingly crude standpoint epistemology is the best argument you can employ then I don't think you're in a position to be discrediting anyone else over the value or coherency of their ideas

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the-everqueen · 5 months

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Happy birthday!! I'm loving all of these but more about Rose as a final girl au?? 👀 even if other people have already gotten to that

YES. ROSE MY FINAL GIRL! for a wip that is currently rawboned because i'm trying to determine Key Scenes, this really is the au of my heart and i'm very surprised no one else has done it. (on the other hand, i guess this fandom largely does not care about Rose Walker as a character worth exploring in fic, so.) things i want to explore:

Blackness as an ontological position that deals with quotidian horror: why yes i read a lot of critical race theory for my work

the final girl as a kind of monstrous figure, because what else can defeat the monster figure of the slasher.

[spoiler: i do think the logical end of this fic would be that Rose supplants Dream, but there's something to be said about how horrific the og end of the doll's house arc is, too, with Rose FINALLY encountering an adult/mother figure whom she is almost immediately separated from by death. very Hartman's "Lose Your Mother" type shit. also can someone else write the connection between the Middle Passage epistemology and how the Walkers are literally separated by an ocean from their last remaining ancestor and she has to die to enable them to have any kind of survival/future? or am i gonna have to write a whole essay.]

Rose's proximity to the Corinthian is precisely what saves her brother and also in some sense her...what entails horror for most of the audience actually appears as a kind of boon for her because she exists outside the same narrative structures as the rest of the human characters due to being the Vortex.

Dream is very much sympathetic in the ways that a lot of slasher figures are intended to be (Jason, Michael Myers, Candyman, etc.), as in the slasher is supposed to address some perceived "wrong" but their only recourse is violence...but also from the POV of a final girl, the slasher is strictly antagonistic because who gives a shit about his hangups when he's trying to kill you - i.e., what is the price of your survival for the status quo

as someone who has been scared their whole life, i love horror as a medium for exploring "the oldest emotion known to mankind." and i think the genre offers fun ways to think through Rose's subjectivity.

#ask games #final girl au #rose walker #i gotta rewatch the doll's house arc so i can get some timeline shit cleared up #but also like...ah!!! what if Rose clocked Dream as a threat from the get go?? what options does she really have???

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kiefbowl · 9 months

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how do you deal with being a lot smarter/ having your brain work in a different way than most people? I see you get bored at work quickly. How does it translate in interpersonal relationships? Do you make friends easily (real friends, not acquaintances you are friendly with)? was it hard finding a partner that could keep up? Do you find most people boring rather fast? Do you spend more time by yourself, in hobbies that don't require too much contact with other people? just curious as it seems we work the same way for a lot a things.

Hmmm...I don't think I'm "smarter" than most people, I think I have a high efficiency in logic, and I had a lot of good opportunities to be exposed to many different topics in my education, including philosophical topics like epistemology (how do you know something) that are helpful tools. I don't think the things I've learned require any innate intelligence to understand, in fact I think most people could understand given the opportunity. I think in retrospect my logical prowess (brag) had a downside of me being rather rigid and also sometimes assuming something I believed came from logic rather than belief, especially religion when I was a teen. In any case, that's something I'm better at now. I'm also more comfortable than ever going "I don't know." Also, once you get to that point of being comfortable saying "I don't know", you learn quickly how much you're saying it. Fucking don't know anything really lol.

I get bored easily because most people do. Frankly, you just have to lower your expectations at work. You're not going to get to do the things your best suited for all the time. I'm making a switch into a high paced, high pressure career because honestly I've learned about me that I thrive in that condition. I hate having nothing to do at work, it feels like a waste of my time. When I have a job that asks me to have 6 things in my head at once, I do great. When I have a job that asks me to get one thing done, then get another thing done, I get neither done because I'm on tumblr all day procrastinating. Sometimes to figure out who you really are you just have to do a bit of everything for ten years, it's fine.

I make friends fine, there's some struggle because I love really intimate conversation the most, and I find that hard to ask for lately. Also, you get older, parties are fewer and far between. People just have things to do, so you have to find your own thing to do, too. It's better investing in classes and skills than going out to drink every weekend, believe me (or don't).

My bf and I are different in a lot of ways. Our relationship does not always look like the relationship I had in my head when I thought of my "dream relationship" and that's okay. I don't know if he "keeps up" with me, he doesn't have the same skill at debate as me tbh and sometimes he doesn't even try cause he knows I'll win, which isn't very satisfying for a debater (me lol). But life's not just about winning arguments, sometimes it's about hanging out and watching tv together and walking the dog. I think he's taught me that making everything an intellectual exercise is actually exhausting and sometimes it's nice to just say well I guessed I liked that and not think much else. I have other people to pick apart media and politics with.

No, I find people endlessly fascinating. People have better stories than I could ever dream up in my head. I love people. I want to cozy up with anyone in a little cafe and hear their life story and pick their brain apart. Even if I end up disliking them, it's fun to armchair psychoanalyze them in my head lol.

Ehhh, lately yes I spend a lot of time by myself. I don't know if I'm happier that way or that's just how it's shaked out after the pandemic, but I'm much more comfortable being alone than I was as a teen. Even in my relationship, we just sometimes do our own thing in the same space, and I like that more than ever. However, I am hoping my new career will get me in contact with lots of new people. I've said this before not too long ago, but I personally think if your friendships are getting stale, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you or them, you just need more variety in your life. You have to miss them sometimes to make the relationship stronger. I also have someone I've been getting closer too lately in the past few weeks that I'm excited to extend a more intimate request of friendship soon. I hope she'll say yes to brunch I really want to talk to her more and want to be close friends with her :)

Anon, I'm glad you can see something in me that reminds you of you. Hold on to that as proof that people like you are out there, and you probably have more things in common with all people than you might realize. Also, you will change. Things change. I'm not old but I'm older, and I can tell. When being a homebody gets boring, you'll become a social butterfly. When that gets stale, you'll become a homebody again. It's the way of things.

Good luck sis :)

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maaruin · 4 months

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The mass on Christmas this year felt different... I was less into it, more distanced from it. Part of it was that the Church didn't use candles and that I wish we could have sung more than 2 or 3 verses of the hymns we sung (if it is a good hymn, please let me sing the whole thing, I'm not in a hurry). Part of it is that this Christmas came at the wrong moment for me emotionally. But another factor was that while I have fewer doubts about Christianity than in the past, these doubts have become more specific. And they specifically hit Christmas. Three points: 1. I have settled on an answer to the Problem of Suffering/Evil. I think that God creates for the benefit of the creatures he creates, and if he does that he will create every (sentient) creature for whom existence is preferable to non-existence, even if that existence includes a lot of suffering. This is IMO a good answer (and I will try to publish it in an academic article next year). But it has the problem that many creatures who hope for eternal life will not experience it. They will have a good life, but will hope for something they may not receive - and I could very well be one of these creatures. There is perhaps a way out of this in Christian theology - maybe "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." (1 Corinthians 15:26) means that Jesus' ressurrection somehow makes death - going from existence into non-existence - impossible. But I do not know how and if such a thing would even be logically possible. (In addition, it hinges on a specific bible verse, which I view as problematic - see point 3.)

2. An understanding of God that seems plausible to me is that God is a being that has all true properties to the fullest extent, and that creatures are differentiated from God by not sharing all of his properties to the full extend. For example, humans have the property of knowledge and existence, but not of omniscient. Elementary particles have no knowledge but still share the property of existence with God. (This requires a depravation-theory of evil: evil is not a true property, but the lack of some property.) The problem with this, however, is that if God and humans are differentiated by God having some properties that humans lack, how can God become human?

God becoming human is what is celebrated on Christmas, and it is difficult to celebrate something that you are not certain is possible.

3. If I was confident that 2 is just a lack of understanding but that I could trust revelation that God did actually become human, maybe that would be enough. But I am not confident that everything the Bible says/everything the Church teaches is correct. I think the general events described in the New Testament likely happend, but the individual verses reflect the respective authors understanding, they aren't dictated by God. And I am not confident that the general events described necessarily lead to the conclusion that Jesus was God. In the Church the divinity of Christ was disputed until at least the end of the fourth century.

I do plan to do my doctoral research (if I get the opportunity) on the epistemology of religious revelations. Maybe I will end up with a sufficient justification for beliving in the divinity of Christ. Maybe I will realize ther is no such justification. But right now I simply don't know.

In the past, Christmas was often a sort of religious escapism for me. For a few days I would simply affirm what I hoped to be true, because I was uncertain about so many things that I felt it didn't matter, and the incarnation is very appealing as a concept. But now I am much more secure in many of my beliefs, so the points where I am not sure have become a lot more noticable and specified.

#christianity #christmas #theology #revelation #incarnation #problem of evil #god #jesus #philosophy #i know that i am doing what i need to be doing - using philosophy to try to figure out what's the truth in religious matters #so the experience this year is absolutely a price i am willing (and required to) pay

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landwriter · 1 year

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🍇

I know there are the Sandman fandom faves, but curious if you have any scenes/volumes/moments you particularly love or any you think could use more rep.

fruit fic asks!

🍇 Is there a particular scene/episode/book/etc that you want to just write a million fics about, over and over? Which one?

Such a thoughtful question dude, thank you! Terrible confession to make: I have not actually watched a single episode of The Sandman since first watching the show. At most I've scrubbed through for screencaps or dialogue, and before writing the Corinthian for the first time I watched a YouTube compilation of all his scenes haha 😅

I have also not read the comics, although I have definitely peeked at some panels and have a familiarity-by-osmosis of the events.

Further excluding fandom faves (Season of the Mists toast, Corinthian dark mirror lines, Dream's battleskirt, all show scenes featuring Hob Gadling), I am thinking HARD and can offer the following for bits I adore/am constantly wanting to write about:

The Corinthian's dialogue to Lucienne re: Dream as he leaves the Dreaming in S1E2: “You can’t change him. You can’t save him either.” This is a fucken LEITMOTIF to me from the moment I heard again (did not even take notice on the first watch! It sure hits differently with wider canon knowledge!). Change is a huge theme in The Sandman, but I'm particularly obsessed with how Dream's views on changeability are expressed through his relationships with his creations and the words they say too. Compare with Hob's fateful line in 1889: “I think it’s you that’s changed.”

Humanity as the explicit catalyst for said change is an absolute brainworm to me - see also Gault, Dream's relationship with Hob, Dream's forced imprisonment within the Waking - but in particular, holding this in mind while considering the Corinthian's lines about his justification for the cereal serial killing: “Do you know why I do it? So I can taste what it’s like to be human. You don’t care about humanity.” When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When all you have is teeth, everything looks like a meal, right? Coupled with the unexpectedly heart-aching delivery here it feels like The Corinthian is out doing what Dream needs to do: being curious, and reaching out to humanity - albeit in an unacceptable way. But I don't think Dream made the Corinthian too hungry. I think he made him too curious. His sin is wanting to know, and how can that possibly be treated with sympathy from an equally arrogant being that harbours the collective unconscious? Dream believes he knows everything already and cannot abide wanting more himself. He's a study in self-denial and repression for the sake of his function. But who else is willing to challenge the fundamental laws of his existence to chase his appetite for more? Who else wants to taste all of life? It's so tragic to me - it feels inevitable through and through, and when you put the desires that got the Corinthian unmade next to the desires that got Hob Gadling all his living...ow.

The opening monologue/narration in S1E1. I just think it's neat! It's such a good example of Dream's character voice and epistemology all at once. By the time Charles Dance was on the screen I was fully and wholly sold on Sandman. I would love to write some fics about the ol' Demon King sometime.

Okay fuck it I know you said excluding fandom faves but I have to be honest and say every single word that came out of Hob's mouth in 1389

#asks #fruit fic asks #an essay #meta #been meaning to write an essay about The Corinthian and Hob Gadling and Dream for AGES and it's started leaking out oh no #the sandman #the corinthian #hob gadling #dream of the endless

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transmutationisms · 7 months

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I would love to hear more of your thoughts on House & its relation to the detective genre ! I think that house (completely accidentally and very badly) stumbles into a good critique of how doctors & medical structures view addicts & disabled people, with house being a horrible hegemonic mr malpractice to his patients frequently yet half is series is unironically just about all the injustice/mistreatment he faces because his doctor colleagues can’t see him as a person but only as a problem to be solved/rehabbed/therapized/institutionalized/treated like a child with stolen candy/treated like a criminal. and then it also randomly takes an incredibly pro MAID stance. which isn’t really part of this but I just remembered how batshit insane that show was. and then chase killed a dictator and I feel like the show was squarely on his side for that one. Anyway. Do you have thoughts? I really like house.

ok here's my house md take. like a lot of medical dramas, the show essentially relies for its dramatic appeal on the construal of patients as gross, weird, and stupid—rubes who are too uneducated and self-serving in their petty lies to solve their own bodies, and thus need the intervention of house to fix them. this is standard for the genre, although slightly meaner on house than on some other examples (cf. grey's or even the older and soapier generation of these shows). i don't even think house committing malpractice is all that new; it's relatively common as a plot point that positions the noble rule-breaking doctor as someone who 'does what needs to be done' and skirts the bureaucratic red tape to follow their own superior judgment. what makes house more interesting is that from the get-go, house himself is both a doctor and an unwilling patient. in itself this isn't a tension that's new to the medical soap (injuring a major character is pretty par for the course) but house's particular interactions with the ruling biomedical epistemology are, as you point out, characterised by hostility and resistance, and the show frequently either sides with house, or at least leaves it somewhat up to the viewer to decide whether house is right to resist the pathologisation that cuddy and wilson try to impose on him.

this is kind of a tricky line to walk for 7 seasons or however long the show is. my recollection is there are episodes, for example, where it's very clear that house's pain is physical, and the writers use this to morally justify his vicodin use. this is obviously not a full-throated defence of opioid users, but it is at least pointing to a position on chronic pain that allows for the possibility that for some people, long-term use of drugs with a high addiction potential and side effects is legitimately the best thing. but, this messaging is also undercut by the fact that it's primetime television, they need to make drama, and there are definitely also episodes where house is framed as potentially lying about his pain, or at least mistaking a somatic problem for a physical one, which the writers often (not always, but often) present as evidence that actually, house shouldn't be trusted to make his own decisions about drug use, and ideally should be 'de-toxed' and probably sent to cbt or whatever. of course all of these considerations are also contextualised by the fact that house is, again, not just a patient but a doctor: his right and ability to make these types of calls for himself is, it's suggested, a result of his having attained medical education and credentials. the patients who come to be treated by him are seldom, if ever, given this same level of consideration or presumed to have sufficient self-awareness to make their own medical decisions. this isn't to say they're portrayed entirely unsympathetically, but ultimately the narrative engine of the show relies on house being the smartest guy in the room (though ofc, sometimes tragically 'held back by his addiction').

so, although there are moments on the show that genuinely transgress some of the norms of the med-drama genre, i have never agreed with people who thought that the show as a whole was presenting any sustained critique of the medical system, the treatment of chronic pain/disability, or the power-imbalanced doctor-patient relationship. ultimately all authority on house md is supposed to emanate from the physician, or the physician's superiors (cuddy as a 'check' on house, though sometimes a failed one! again because of the need to generate drama for like 140 episodes), and at its most radical the show is really only capable of presenting house himself as an out-of-control aberration whose existence strains the existing system rather than being produced by it.

this is where i think the comparison to the cop show genre becomes more clarifying. house md never made a secret of being an interpolation of the detective genre, specifically sherlock holmes. however, i'm not sure i've ever really seen writing on the show that analyses what effect this actually has on house. like police, doctors are tasked with maintaining certain social norms; the dichotomy between policing and medicine isn't even a solid line, as criminality is frequently rhetorically construed as a pathology in itself and medical authorities can and do have recourse to carceral systems in order to discipline and confine recalcitrant patients, the 'criminally insane', addicts, and so forth. (policing has historically also been understood in a more expansive sense than how we use the word today; our understanding of the medical/public health system as separate from police authority is arguably more to do with university credentialling than the actual exercise of social and political power).

so, if we want to be serious about the portrayal of medicine in popular culture (i am always serious about this) then we're necessarily talking about broader systems of power, social control, and discipline, and doubly so on a show like house that is explicitly inspired by detective fiction. this is where house md is most ideologically objectionable to me: as with the trope of the cop who breaks all the rules, house is basically positioned in one of two ways throughout the show. either he's a lone genius who alone is willing to achieve noble ends (cure) through distasteful means (breaking into patients' homes, berating them, performing risky interventions on them, &c), or—and this is rarer on house but does happen—he's portrayed as genuinely crossing an ethical line, in which case he's a kind of monstrous aberration from the normal, ethical functioning of the medical system, often represented metonymously by the objections that cuddy, wilson, or house's underlings raise. in both of these cases, as with copaganda, the function is ultimately to reinforce the idea that doctors, though occasionally capable of human error, are prima facie wiser than their patients, looking out for their patients' best interests, and performing noble social roles as healers. house, ofc, is very rarely willing to admit that he has any underlying ethical motivations, though much of the show is driven by the flashes where he is revealed to 'secretly' care about another person (often wilson) and anyway, the construction of an ethical society in which all individual actors are motivated solely by selfish interests is a very established rhetorical move for those interested in defending liberal capitalist societies (cf. charles darwin, thomas malthus, adam smith, &c).

because of television's need to generate profit via audience engagement, house md always relied on a certain level of shock or at least provocation in order to sustain itself. so, there are certain aberrations from the more overtly doctor-valorising medical dramas, like the suggestion (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) that house was better at his job when he was mildly high on opioids. this was, for the reasons outlined above, never a serious entry into political critique, but it was at least refreshing in a certain way as a departure from, eg, the portrayal of addiction and drug use that we see on grey's, which is completely limited to the medicalised AA narrative of 'recovery' as a battle against the malevolent intervention of an external chemical agent. which is to say that although house md is ultimately reactionary in the way we should expect from an american tv show, it did at least dabble in a certain level of caustic iconoclasm that allowed limited departures from the genre conventions. even with what was ultimately a pretty solid vindication of the anti-opioid narrative, the show does stand out in my mind as one of the few very popular presentations of any kind of alternative stance on chronic drug use. that it's usually put in house's own mouth means it is occasionally legitimated by his epistemological authority as a physician, though ofc ultimately this authority is challenged not through a critique of the medical system, but by presenting house as individually and aberrantly licentious, undisciplined, and insane—and his chronic pain/disability are both a justification for this, and a shorthand for conveying it.

#house md

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ebp-brain · 1 year

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chapter 1 on ao3

1985, London. The wizarding queer art scene revolves around a gallery called the Bent, where conceptual artist Remus Lupin and photographer Sirius Black exhibit their works, and a club called the Bush, where they spend time with Jane and Lily Potter, who work at a nearby heath clinic. Although war with Voldemort was averted, the wizarding world is still simmering with tension. In the face of increasing intolerance and calls for censorship, Remus’ art takes a riskier, more political turn, and he must figure out how to balance self-expression and safety. Also, he might be falling in love with his best friend.

Author's notes:

This fic came out of both love and anger. Love for queer and feminist artists in the 80s and 90s who risked their reputations, safety, and livelihoods to take photos of men in BDSM gear or talk openly about sexual violence, who refused to whittle themselves down into something straight society would be comfortable with. And anger at contemporary laws like Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill and violence directed at drag queens and trans kids, and at the strain of gay conservatism that thinks the solution is to eliminate representations of kink, nonconformity, and radicalism from queer art and media. This is a fic about the struggles and the joys of being queer in a way that isn't meant to make other people comfortable.

It's also about friendship and intimacy and solidarity and falling in love! It's about sticking together in the face of danger and figuring out who's really got your back. It's also about what happens when you accidentally have sex with your best friend in the bathroom of a gay club. Oops!

I wasn’t alive in the 80s, but this era of queer life and culture has always felt singularly important to me. Part of this probably had to do with the fact that I was a theatre kid, and theatre people tend to remember the AIDS crisis pretty vividly, since it took so many of their own. (Also, I was very into Rent in high school.) Part of it is because a lot of foundational queer theory comes out of this moment. I imprinted pretty hard on Epistemology of the Closet in particular, which is in many ways a response to AIDS-era homophobia. And many of my teachers were around, or taught by people who were around, during this exciting, terrifying period of queer history. As I post a new chapter every Sunday, I'll also post author's notes, photos, and links to additional resources about the real-life people and events that inspired this fic.

This week, here's some stuff about queer art and artists in this period:

Photos by David Gwinnutt of Stephen Linard and Cerith Wyn Evans

Some good articles:

Blitz spirit: the queer art underground of 1980s London – in pictures

Queer Life in the '70s and '80s: Art, Activism, & AIDS

22 Photos of LGBTQ+ Writers, Artists, & Activists of the '80s and '90s

Sending love to you all. Take care of yourselves! <3

#the bent #bent posting #harry potter #harry potter fic #wolfstar #wolfstar fic #remus x sirius #earlybloomingparentheses #my fic #cw homophobia #cw transphobia #cw AIDS

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oysters-aint-for-me · 6 days

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(Tw fictional suicide) Omg fellow Good Place finale disliker? I don't like how it resolves literally every problem in the afterlife and gives the main characters anything they want for as long as they want it, up to and including inventing Suicide 2 in case they get bored of eternal happiness. It's an unsatisfying ending for me after so much of the show was about how human life is short and imperfect.

oooh my god like i said don't even get me STARTED on why i hated the good place finale EXCEPT I WILL

okay so like you said - i hated that the solution to the afterlife was literally just eternal bliss plus the Suicide 2 Electric Boogaloo Door. like. that solved no problems, really. people cannot live in eternal bliss without it become not blissful at some point. and the solution to that CAN'T just be "go through the suicide door!" because oh my god that is SO SIMPLE and also, like, would make the people left behind sad, which would mean life wasn't blissful for them anymore, making it no longer the good place, you know? like...life has to be a LITTLE hard in order for the moments of joy to be, well, enjoyable. i really believed that the writers knew this and that the solution to the good place wouldn't be just "heaven with the option to die at the end"

second of all they did NOTHING to revamp the points system. people "on earth" were judged by the exact same parameters that had been the problem in the first place. the points system was flawed. in SO MANY WAYS. and the show acknowledged those ways! and yet. it stayed exactly the same.

my third and biggest problem with the ending was the "series of trials" that they decided to put everyone through after their "first life" on earth. you know, like, someone would live on earth, die, and then their points would be their points. then that someone would be tested over and over and over again until they became a better person and got into the good place. i have several issues with that but for now i'll talk about just three

how fucked up is that?! think of all the times the main four humans learned that they were actually in the bad place, or actually being tested, or whatever. they were ALWAYS unhappy about it. OF COURSE. also - they almost always figured it out. so they're just expecting no one else to pick up on a scheme that someone picked up on ALMOST EVERY TIME in beta? with no improvements?

in one episode, in the middle of all the reboots, they're at mindy st. claire's medium place house after they've figured out (again) that they're actually being tortured and rebooted. chidi says to eleanor something like "this is an epistemological nightmare. we keep getting rebooted so we can't actually learn anything because we can't remember." AND YET THAT IS EXACTLY THE SOLUTION HE PROPOSES - the series of trials after death, the rebooting, all of it. and everyone agrees to it. they only add the caveat that people will be able to hear a "little voice" that tells them to do the right thing, and that "little voice" will learn over time - but that feels like a cop out. that doesn't actually help US HUMANS who are WATCHING THE SHOW improve

the solution doesn't fix anything on earth! everyone on earth can go on being an asshole or whatever, or trying to be good and ultimately failing, and the world will just keep getting worse, while people improve ONLY in the afterlife through their series of trials?! come ON. you're just making a million multiverses for each person that dies while completely ignoring what is happening on earth. the earth is unimportant in the good place finale. no one gets better there, no one learns. okay, fine, whatever, earth sucks - except earth is where the VIEWERS of the SHOW live, and we'd like to learn how to be good in a world that is increasingly too complicated to support being good, thank you very much.

i guess my thing is like, how does the ending help US? what does it teach US about doing good on earth, with all its confusion and complications? all it teaches us is to "listen to the little voice," but real ethics isn't as simple as that. REAL moral problems aren't as simple. i guess maybe i was expecting too much from a network sitcom, but i really felt like i'd been tricked or something. i thought i was watching something more intelligent than it really was.

#i just rewatched the good place too and my opinion has not changed #the show is fun until the fourth season #and the fourth season was exactly as disappointing as i remembered #tw suicide #asks #anonymous

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