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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 1hr ago

Leading to the obvious question, was this trauma what made Will gay?

I think it was the trauma from the retcon that did it, since Vecna didn't catch Will in S1; he'd just fallen prey to the environment at that point. Though perhaps maybe the spores and the tentacles can infect you with the gay re: Robin, and why the gay characters didn't think the atmosphere in the Upside Down was dangerous when asked. They were already carrying it, you see.

Is Vecna as a metaphor for pedophilla?

Vecna as a metaphor for the show's writers. You've correctly identified that it is child abuse, but not for the reasons you're probably thinking of.

"Let's just use children as props to [ab]use because we're too lazy to write them as actual human beings" is an incredibly apt description of S5, and most of the good parts of S5 were... starring a 14 year old playing a 9 year old in full jailbait uniform for basically no reason (clearly, practical for trudging around in the forest and desert heat)[1]. You do kind of forget that after a while, but it presses the "child beauty pageant" button.

It's a grown woman wearing child-face. Which is consistent with how the rest of the formerly-kid characters act, come to think of it (it's especially jarring with 11, since that character's design means they can't hide it... even though they kind of did in S4), and probably why the writers wouldn't see much problem with it either. After all, how else are you going to convince the audience this [again, obviously grown woman] is A Child? Remember, the original cast was actually physically younger than their stated ages (and, uh, that's how it is in real life too), but if you forget why that works this is the result.

As for those nice, veiny, oral intubation scenes with Vecna... I think they were just going for shock value and stock "villain is a walking pedo stereotype". They had a schedule to keep, after all. That's not really anti-woke, though[2]. It also blows suspension of disbelief because Stranger Danger accompanied the Satanic Panic, and the latter was a massive plot point in S4- there's no fucking way those "kids" should have believed that, and yet.

It's purely there for pandering.

And it didn't even do that effectively, because it basically destroyed that ship (and the teenage girls most interested in it) for a moralizing gotcha. Again, an example of "how adults think sexuality works", not how it actually works[2, again].

Contrast S1, where as you said, the characters acted fucking normal. The kid characters in particular weren't just cheap throwaway props, especially and most relevantly Will, who exercised agency and intelligence every time he was actually interacting with something (and even better- every time he takes the advice of adults- suffers overwhelmingly negative consequences of doing so instead of using his fucking brain; this was a massive plot point in S2 and basically every season thereafter, because [the writers needed a prop, so they made sure] he never learned). And it's not like the writers forgot how to write a character like this, since Derek (of all people) does this every time he's on screen.

[1] Adventuring outfits don't look like this, they look like this. One would expect an artist who draws the latter character nude on occasion to have the more sexualized design, yet in fact the opposite is true.

[2] But it is what traditionalists will think is anti-woke, because they're usually incapable of noticing that "forcing an adult outlook on kids with respect to sex" is the specific mode of abuse (and is correctly called out as a bad thing when it happens to Will in S1), rather than suggesting the actual act itself. It's a very feminine mode of sexual abuse, which men don't usually understand (they can only identify suggestions of the actual act).

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 14hr ago · Edited 14hr ago

I also think it was trapped in development hell, and had been through so many damned rewrites, that they'd lost track of what they were even doing anymore. So a lot of the thematic and character threads seemed to have fallen between the cracks.

The show has a common through-line where all the characters forget their development between seasons and they spend half the runtime just getting back to where their relationship should logically be. The only season that's exempt from this is S1, and it actually features all of the characters as it actively forces control out of the hands of the adult characters a lot of the time[1] (compare S5, where they're been reduced to stock characters that forgot all their development).

I get that some of that is due to bad luck- writer's strikes, the uncommon cold, etc.- and the fact that a lot of the dynamics rest on the cast not aging out, except they did. So "a delayed X may be good someday, but a bad X is bad forever" can't apply and "well, let's just get it over with" is how it goes down.

Most of the distinct character dynamics seemed to have been lost besides the love triangle between Steve, Jonathan and Nancy.

They should have all drowned in the Cum Room, to be honest. And given that we already got a "if you didn't understand whatever the fuck that dialog was, it's your problem I guess" from the writers...

Finn Wolfhard has been phoning it in since he started doing movies and I'm not sure anyone cared about him and 11 anymore.

Hold on, Mike was actually in Season 5? I mean, I guess it's no big deal, he's only the main love interest for two of the characters [2] so it's natural he'd be absent.

Also, I watched Fire and Ash over the same period of time and enjoyed the contrast between that and Stranger Things: in F&A, characters get punished for their stupid, unforced mistakes. Sully is an objectively bad leader (as are all leaders in the Blue Man Group- the RDA is most just busy jacking off in a corner for this one), there are serious consequences to this, and it was great.

I guess at the end of the day, it didn't ruin the show for me, which is high praise these days.

I dropped it after that episode and am unwilling to watch the finale- if the show doesn't give a shit about its characters, why should I? The lack of shitposting about it on 4chan is notable and suggests a substantial jump in quality, but I've had enough and will just read the synopsis later. Though, that reminds me that I really need to catch up on both the movie and S2 of Made in Abyss.

[1] The fact that they knew to do this demonstrated that this was actually going to be a decent show that was going to use its characters properly- specifically the kid characters, who generally tend to be underdeveloped. I mean, even Will got a massive amount of development in the opening scene of S1 simply by going straight for the gun (and by being generally intelligent with the tools he had)- you'd expect him to get even better than that in the later seasons but he actively regressed until the final crybaby "i DoN'T lIkE gIrLs" (and accepting being cucked out of his role in the story by Joyce for half the season) state in S5.

And sure, S5 has some of this... but only when Holly and Derek (and to a point, Max) are involved. Hell, it'd have been funnier (and ironically, more mature) if Derek was secretly gay; "suck my fat one" indeed.

[2] Which is why I'm actually glad that ship is dead- Will age-regressed hard, and it would have been weird and creepy as a consequence (which is partially, in my opinion, why that emotional scene was doomed no matter what else they did). I guess being a bottom bitch (in the ending) is natural for what his character ultimately became, but what a fucking disappointment. The same thing's true of 11 but for different reasons; she only aged physically, not mentally.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 16hr ago · Edited 14hr ago

but I find anti-woke observers become too hung up on woke trappings rather than critically analyzing the story itself

Anti-wokes are mostly just temporarily-embarassed wokes, what else is new?

this never would have happened in the 1980s

What, hiding behind Muh Social Issue to excuse/justify bad writing? That wasn't really a widespread thing in the '80s [or at least, if it was, the media like this has been consigned to the dustbin where it belongs], so doing that in what bills itself as an '80s highlight reel is... going to cause some whiplash, to put it lightly.

That said, though, there are a few good stereotypically-'80s series that proceeded to get worse and more flanderized as time went on (I'm mostly thinking of the slasher movies here) into the point of unrecognizability, perhaps it is indeed period-accurate.

and making that central to his personal story and character growth needed to win the entire conflict

No, the justified reaction is that this plot point was fucking stupid, because...

and making that central to [Will's] personal story and character growth needed to win the entire conflict

...Will doesn't have any meaningful personal story or character growth. Not that there was much of that post-S1 anyway for any of the other S1 characters, but Will didn't even get an establishing character moment in S1 or S2 beyond "be the MacGuffin" (and the growth [or active de-growth, for that matter] he did get in S2 kind of erased what little he had in S1), and that's ignoring all the retcons.

So he's in the unenviable position of both being a perfect vehicle for Author's Pet Cause without really having earned any of it. But then, that's also a hallmark of modern culture too, so maybe that's actually period-accurate and I'm just complaining too much about it; now if you'll excuse me, I have some Doritos to eat.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 2d ago · Edited 2d ago

even if they are less dangerous.

In an environment of actual equality they axiomatically must be treated as equally dangerous and destructive; the overwhelming majority of the modern problems with the relations between the sexes (problems that started 150 years ago, though various economic forces during that time would disguise this) are caused by society's failure to do exactly this.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 3d ago · Edited 3d ago

This money would have done more social good if someone drove through the streets throwing bags of it off the back of a truck.

I disagree, for the same reason the government does.

The intended recipients of the social program budget are the social workers; the point of these programs is to employ them. It's UBI, basically- that's the social good the government is buying, and abating starvation in the poorest cross-section of the proletariat is secondary. After all, it's not them who'll be revolting if their meal ticket were revoked (if they were capable of this they wouldn't need the aid, obviously); and "but if you axe these programs then children will die" [cue Sarah McLachlan] has for the overwhelming fraction of modernity been a nearly unbeatable campaign slogan so it continues.

That's why fraud really is small potatoes here- the stated goal of "making sure the disadvantaged get the money" is a propaganda line to make the UBI-receivers think they're doing good (and to keep the low-information voters in line), much like "making sure children get educated" is for the education system.

For maximum cynicism, you can class all UBI-receivers as the intended recipients- "fraud" is just a way of asserting that you're smart enough, and assertive enough, to be a threat to the government's social project (whatever that happens to be and why remains an exercise for the reader), and should have bags of money thrown at you to mollify you just like the natives do. If you are not, it's a signal you'll act in other anti-social ways that are more obviously identifiable as such (especially in male-coded ways that associate would-be-only-fraudsters with imminent security threats [i.e. eating the neighborhood pets], which make the other UBI-receivers nervous thus risking they do things that result in more votes for the other guy).

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 3d ago

On one hand, I can see the desire for clemency from other white-collar workers: we don't want being Catch-22'd to be a death sentence because of stupid bureaucrats/senior management- something we are threatened with/reminded of every single day in some form or another, so naturally we are concerned that making it a death sentence for others will instead ultimately expand into a death sentence for these kinds of things (and turn into a not-death-sentence for others because anarcho-tyranny).

On the other hand, the price of choosing to negotiate with obvious anti-social elements instead of mercilessly deleting them is not zero. Compare "insurance premiums go up to cover loss", but in the linked case, you get the message that crime will not be tolerated while the [steelman of the] Blue Tribe way of just ignoring it does not yield such a benefit.

On the gripping hand, I think that if we start by punishing bureaucrats that produce codes that can't be compiled and judges that intentionally fail to judge this way (and someone already tapped the sign that calls for this) then maybe society will return to being compatible with the idea once again.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 12d ago · Edited 12d ago

Is it possible to share space with people who have evil, objectively incorrect viewpoints?

It certainly is; I do that every day, in fact.

The way you deal with that is by refuting the viewpoint directly, not the viewpointer, for actual fact is an asymmetric weapon on the side of the one most aligned with it.

As for the people who reject that, well, people who embody selfishness before actual truth will still give quests in return for a reward that aligns with their interests.

(This is also why I find left vs. right framings pointless, because there's no way to split the people in each faction that are driven wholly by self-interest from the people whose self-interest aligns with improving things in that framing, and the people who deploy it against their enemies to deny that it's an aspect of themselves are typically the former type.)

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 13d ago

On a societal level, undercautious.

Otherwise, you start to get problems with people who aren't parents starting to think they're entitled to enforce caution by proxy because "don't you know all babies are at risk of randomly exploding?", and would-be parents thinking the same and either spend more resources solving an imaginary problem or judge having to deal with an exploded baby too risky and then fail to become parents. This is more important when the first baby a prospective parent encounters is their own, since there's no way to reliably calibrate risk any other way.

It's not the only thing that causes that socially destructive behavior (I'd argue "don't you know your kid could just get randomly snatched?" is the biggest one- that isn't really random either, of course), but it is a contributor.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 13d ago

And so they give them a medical-sounding description that connotes a random medical event

The problem with this, of course, is that parents that are diligent/intelligent but aren't in on the joke will treat SIDS like it actually could happen to them. So they end up taking a bunch of steps they don't need to, and are improperly convinced their babies are far more fragile than they actually are; this attitude then extends into childhood and they just get smothered a different way.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 14d ago · Edited 14d ago

Radfems sound like crazy people to me.

A radfem is simply a woman about whom traditionalist thought is right: being objectively inferior, and sex (and other related physical attributes) being the literal only thing of value they possess.

Everything they do is a reaction to this (and yes, the non-TE RFs are betraying the revolution, but note that what they do is primarily designed to attack and marginalize ~~the manlier women~~ the women about whom traditionalism happens to be wrong).

This is why seduction has to be rape- because for them, while they aren't smart enough to prevent being snookered out of the literal only valuable thing about them, they are at least smart enough to know that.

This is why they're obsessed with one thing, and one thing only: exerting as much control over how their only source of worth can be accessed and used. It's literally all they have, and everything they say and do is downstream of this- if they can get themselves embedded in the State's welfare system, then they're going to do that; if they can declare all sex rape by default, they're going to do that; if they can make themselves powerful enough that they'll never be forced to perform a biological function to get a meal, they're going to do that; if they can get away with making this observation unsayable, they'll do that.

I'm not willing to engage in the pretense they don't know what they're doing any more than I am in the pretense that a man might not know he shouldn't beat his wife. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that Haidt's Six Foundation people only have the morals they do partially because it allows them to still see themselves as moral while rent-seeking like this (you should value me more because purity/authority/your ingroup).

This operation of exerting control is also done by men when "ability to labor" is the only value they possess; that's why if you replace "workers" in union/socialist rhetoric with "women", you get radfem rhetoric.

Every wo/man simply acts in their own best interest. I'm not interested in blaming them for that (which is in traditionalist interests to do- it makes women easier to control if they can be convinced to wholly deny their interests); but those interests better be paying rent to be acceptable (which is in feminist interests to not do- it makes men easier to control if they can be convinced to wholly deny their interests).

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 19d ago

The engine of history is that Adams [right/trad] follow Eves [left/prog] follow Snakes [classic/liberal].

It's popular to pretend Eve/prog and Snake/liberal are the same thing, especially if you're Adam/trad trying desperately to react to something Eve is doing. But if you equate them, you will fail just like everyone else in the past 50 years that tried.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 20d ago

No one knows how to do that.

Oh no, the US has Manifest Destiny, but their founding myth also kind of involves them not being an empire so they don't want to. Plus, the pro-Empire faction is too busy trying to establish a domestic successor empire to bother with taking over other countries in this way.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 21d ago

I think most normies will be turned off.

I think most conservatives will be turned off, conservatives gonna conservative after all. They're the faction that can afford to be snooty; it's a purity thing (per Haidt).

actually racist

People who are fed up with conservatives redefining this word to privilege themselves are ambivalent at worst and positive to "racists" at best. This is why conservatives like Morgan, and his age cohort more generally, pearl-clutch about this.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 21d ago

The idea is that conservatives (progressives) will try to throw you off your game by making some unfounded criticism, to test how secure/powerful you are as a (classical) liberal. It’s called a “shit test.”

I have no further comment.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 22d ago

The upper and lower classes hate that miracle, but for different reasons, and it's just classic high-low vs. middle dynamics.

If they could, they'd take it back.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 22d ago

cost of insurance for teen drivers

This is a non-factor if insurance isn't mandatory, but it means the old pay higher rates to subsidize the young and not the other way around, so naturally that's a non-starter today.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 25d ago

Then nothing is cost-effective except for fossil fuels and hydroelectricity, ultimately.

But we already knew that; that's why banning their use is such a powerful socioeconomic weapon. Nuclear just happens to be both the closest you get to viability (since the plants from the '70s and '80s seem to be doing just fine; that was back when construction and labor were way cheaper though) and something that's arguably worth funneling research dollars into from a materials science perspective.

even if you just handwave away the problem of storing dangerous radioactive waste that lasts for millennia and hope it doesn't leak into the rest of the environment

This line always frustrates me because this is an isolated demand for rigor. Mine drainage (and it is a rather interesting flex that a modern mining company saw fit to name itself after the most expansive environmental mining disaster zone in human history- that being the Rio Tinto, which is what that's a picture of) will kill future Fred Flintstone far more quickly than anything else will. Fortunately, we discovered radioactivity before we invented the backhoe.

And I get that you have to convince John Q. Public of that, who will never come around in their lifetimes thanks, ironically enough, to radiation exposure (they sat too close to the TV while watching Simpsons reruns). Which is why you basically can't do this until you have a military that will deal with that.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 25d ago · Edited 25d ago

having a source of power that isn't reliant on fossil fuels could prove to be particularly useful in a future where fossil fuels are harder to come boy or the Middle East is in a state of war

This is the reason why France has the nuclear system it does- it was de Gaulle's baby precisely because the US doesn't have French (or European) interests at heart. France was under [his] military dictatorship at the time, which helped get things moving.

He was right, of course; both in 1973 with the US-caused oil shortage and then in 2022 with the US-caused LNG shortage.

place a huge emphasis on the density of their energy source are another good use for them

It's not so much that as it is completely obviating the need to resupply with fuel. And, especially relevant for submarines, nuclear power functions even with a complete lack of oxygen, so doing that is a no-brainer.

I haven't seen any convincing evidence that nuclear power is a sustainable answer to the depletion of fossil fuels

It's the only alternative that can work anywhere on the Earth's surface on a calm, cold night. Lighting a fire is the classic method to get energy at that time, but "magic hot rock" is fine too.

I once heard stated that the reason it's difficult to get good output from nuclear is because they simply can't run the reaction hot enough- hence the emphasis on exotic coolants (molten salt, etc.)- whereas with LNG the exhaust heat is sufficiently hot that you can heat the steam driving a secondary turbine to the point where it's very, very efficient. Of course, because we want to reserve the right to quench the reactor if it gets too hot for... certain reasons, we'd like a coolant that doesn't make the problem worse if we do that. At least with LNG you can turn the gas off and the reaction will stop.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 26d ago

taking away big chunks of its independence for political reasons

It's literally just "your rules, fairly". If they didn't like that, maybe it shouldn't have been their rules to begin with.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 28d ago

The modern education system (specifically, post-Cold War) exists solely as a make-work program.

Actually, there's a lot of make-work programs, but this one is the largest of its kind. It works so well that most people don't even understand it is one, and will actually defend its secondary aims as if the secondary aim, education, was the intention.

(And to be fair to more industrious countries- the US in particular- it can work far better at that secondary aim than is commonly given credit. After all, it would otherwise be mind-numbingly boring.)

It takes a massive chunk bite out of the least productive part of the unnecessariat: all children, all young adults up to around 20 or so, and a significant fraction of college-educated women. The social fiction that this is important is load-bearing to a country's stability due to the sheer size of the cross-section of the population warehoused there- if it went out, recession would instantly follow. There's not enough work to employ these people (we've been punting on this problem since the 1930s) and we have enough food for everyone; making them feel useful keeps society stable.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 28d ago

It's "cheating" because the people of X nation don't want to open the door to the Deus Ex world where you have to pay to take the drug for the rest of your natural life or die from being unable to compete with your peers (that can afford it), hence the compact against doing that, and why taking the drug anyway is treated as defection.

Compare "but I can't afford insulin" in the US; while amphetamines are cheaper than that, the next generation of them may not be, in which case a norm that you take them to work might become very costly indeed.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 28d ago

but because the Israeli settler represents everything evil in the left-wing world view

Or rather, the Israeli settler's existence is blasphemous by European religion. And while we can dispute the way Europeans came upon this religion, the fact remains that the existence of Israelis speak against it, and by extension the Great Satan (that being the United States) that [in their view, and arguably correctly] is the only reason they can exist.

We compare this to anti-semitism because Jews have been against European religion before, but the god they worshipped was different back then so it was expressed differently. Right now, Europeans worship a pantheon of various unnamed goddesses, so the methods of addressing blasphemy are a lot more "required to self-flagellate and live in terror and continual denial of the capabilities and desires others assume you have" than they used to be with respect to forced but one-time conversions, expulsion, and just straight up death.

China and Pakistan get away with it because they're not white

The European priestesses can rail against China and Pakistan all they like; they can't do shit about what they do, and they know it (compare "fargroup"). It's not so much "not white" as they are "can't possibly convince America to impose European religion on them", but they can do that to Israel due to it being a tiny country that is simply America's favorite vassal state (and to a point are jealous of this).

And in fairness, Europeans believe this worked against South Africa because the American religion adherents imposed American religion on them around the time a sea-change in what that was occurred (i.e. the 60s), and that just happened to rhyme/align with what European religion is now (so obviously, it was their efforts that did it). So naturally, Europeans will try this with Israel, and will hence do things like try to drag Israeli officials into its ecclesiastical court (and the Americans find rhetorically useful to honor when it suits them, like having the Europeans excommunicate the Russian king a few years ago when he declared war on the buffer state between Europe and Russia) and sanction the Great Satan (the US) over its violation of what Europe perceives, in some degree correctly, is American religious law.

But American religion (or at least, the religion native to Americans) remains compatible with Israeli goals; maximally cynically, it draws a distinction between brown and Black. Even European religion adherents in the US have mostly failed to have the American care for Black extend to brown, which is why they're conflated by adherents of that religion.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 30d ago

Murder both of competitors, politicians, and law enforcement, as well as of alleged collaborators, opponents, and personal rivals/enemies. Human smuggling, sex slavery/prostitution, kidnapping for ransom, and other major crimes, up to and including active armed insurrection against local governments.

So basically, they're just a government-in-waiting that the US doesn't like, and has thrown in with the existing government to remove them in return for owing the US a favor later.

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 1mo ago

I think the Nuremberg trials were rather fair.

Making a big show of "successor empire to all other European empires moving in and taking over makes a big show of failing to brutalize the population any more than is absolutely necessary" is a massive deal. Europe had not been conquered in living memory like that (other than the Nazis; Napoleon did it too but he had been dead for a while), and the fact the Americans had the restraint to do this maintains a certain fiction that European populations still believe to this day- that they were "liberated" and not "conquered" (which is, in objective fact, what happened to them).

send the whole chain of command to the Hague

Perhaps, but since the entire reason the Hague exists is for the US (and Europe so long as it doesn't conflict with US interests re: Israel) to legitimize killing elites in non-US/non-European nations that oppose the aforementioned countries' interests (which is half the reason the signatories are who they are, and why the US is not a signatory to that agreement) it would be rather unusual for the US to try and kill off domestic enemies that way. Of course, most of the provinces are aligned with the conservative/Blue faction, so it wouldn't technically be out of line with how that "court" is typically used...

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ThisIsSin Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature 1mo ago · Edited 1mo ago

This isn't purely an Indian concept, I've seen this type of thing in mainland Chinese behaviour too.

This is also a solid characterization of typical western progressive behavior (and in Eastern Bloc countries under Soviet rule), too, which is perhaps why the two get along so well.

Co-ordination of meanness (of value-finders/productive people) combined with weak state capacity can delete Izzet by deleting its followers when they attack- personal firearms meant a defender could delete an outsized number of attackers, so peace was forced that way- which is why as states weakened coincident with the ability to co-ordinate meanness growing (which is why the Enlightenment happened when it did) Izzet was mostly suppressed in the West.

Once state capacity eclipses the individual's ability to escape it, though, the followers of Izzet tend to be among the first to capture it if the citizenry doesn't wield it appropriately and crush them. This typically requires a monarch, though, since wielding political power that effectively requires a citizenry that is able, willing, and has enough time to do so... and that's not an evolved behavior like Izzet is.

Again, I don't think this is a uniquely Eastern thing- it's visible everywhere you look, should you choose.

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