The Way It's Always Been Done

One of my least favorite fallacies that is used commonly in arguments today is the appeal to tradition. This fallacy revolves around the idea that something has long been valued as true, so there for it must be maintained. This comes up anytime someone says something like "this is the way it's always been done" or in just claiming that something is traditional, and therefore akin to, or even just straight up, sacred.

This is, of course, bullshit.

Traditions exist for many reasons. Going to church is a way of reaffirming your faith. As situations change the need for specific traditions, or rituals associated with these traditions, can also change. If you just go to church because that's what you have always done, going to church loses meaning and, I would argue, value to you as a person. I am not saying that traditions don't have value, I would just like to point out that doing things without thinking  about why you are doing them is harmful to you and the tradition. I would rather see a tradition change then see it stagnate and become meaningless.

Here is a modern example of how sticking to a tradition is damaging to societal growth: Marriage.  Marriage has always been between a man and a woman, so you cannot change it. The thing is, marriage is not just between a man and a woman. In the history of marriage there have been many iterations: one man and multiple women, one women married to multiple males, sets of people intermarried with one another. If this was something that didn't affect other people I would have not problem with it, after all if you want to put limits on yourself, who am I to stop you. But those arguments infringe upon the rights of others because the people making them are too fragile to consider changing their misapprehended term, and that is something that I cannot abide.

Traditions change, and that is the crux of why this fallacy bugs me. We had slaves for a long time, should we have kept that tradition? Women couldn't vote for the bulk of our country's history, should we have kept it that way? Doctors didn't clean themselves before surgery for 90% of human history, should it have stayed that way because it was how it has always been done? The answer to all of these, and any other version is "fuck no, we know more now than we did back then". Context fucking changes constantly (thanks science) and should be taken into account.

The reason this fallacy exists is because people are afraid of change. They are comfortable now, and change might upset their delicate constitutions or whatever. I have stated before, and will probably have to state again, that change is inevitable. Entropy is a thing. You will have to change or you will fall by the wayside, never to be heard from again. Tradition without context is just masturbation. You need to change traditions/rituals to survive with cultural context as time passes and the context inexorably changes, otherwise your traditions become anchors that weigh you down.

Walk into the Club Like What Up I Appreciate Your Needs

Sex is kind of a tricky subject to a lot of people. Some people (wrongly) believe that its an appropriate reward for various behaviors; men who think that not being an asshole entitles them to sex, women who treat sex as a negotiation tactic. Other (wrongly) demonize it or put arbitrary blanket restrictions on its practice. I mean denying consenting adults the right to do as they please with other consenting adults in a private setting, not things like fucking children or those incapable of affirmative consent. Those aren't arbitrary restrictions, those are basic fucking decency and the fact that we need the level of specificity we do says truly fucking disgusting things about a certain percentage of the population. I digress, the point I'm going to assail today is one of slightly less lofty goals. Today I want to talk about how we deal with come-ons.

I don't have any problem with people trying to fuck, provided once again that all parties are of age and can actively consent. It does bother me, however, that more and more, people are trying to restrict where its acceptable to look for a lay. I completely appreciate that people don't like to be accosted by horny passersby on the street; I don't think its appropriate to try and fuck people at your place of work. These restrictions make sense, people ought to be allowed to go about their day without being harassed. The problem I see is that there are certain factions, or possibly just vocal individuals, who apparently want to make all places unacceptable for the casual fuck-seeker.

I've seen complaints about people trying to pick up people at clubs. That is fucking absurd. I will grant that there are groups of people who do not go to clubs to get lucky. I will even grant that these people have every right to be at the club without seeking coitus. It needs to be said, however, that the social context has established that clubs are the best place to go to find someone to have sex with. So being offended by someone asking to fuck you at a club is very much like being offended by someone asking if you'd like some cake at a birthday party. Now yes, some people are entirely too fucking persistent; and yes, some people are fucking assholes in their methodology (I'm looking at you "pick up artists"). But those people are dicks in general, the fact that they are trying to find sex isn't the real issue, the issue is that they're dicks.

The biggest trouble I find with this trend of eliminating opportunities for people to seek casual sex is that it provides no alternative. There will always be people looking for some no-strings loving, and giving them no acceptable place to seek it is pretty fucked up. I, breaking spectacularly from my standard practice, have a suggestion to solve this problem. I propose, breaking even further from the norm, a business opportunity. We need an industry built on sex positive, casual encounters. A place explicitly and in no uncertain terms for finding someone to fuck. A meatspace location, because not everyone digs the various internet opportunities, with age restrictive entrance criteria and a clearly demarcated set of rules to limit assholery. It could even have a bouncer whose only job was to make sure that couples leaving the establishment where both at least mostly sober and consenting. I propose calling it "The Hole S/Hebang"

The Pros and Cons of "Found Footage" Films

I have a strange relationship with found footage style films. Some of the best horror I have seen comes in the form of found footage films, but also some of the worst. For those of you who do not know, a found footage film is a movie that takes place entirely from the perspective of a camera that exists in the environment of the film. These may be handheld cameras wielded by the characters or security cameras as the plot/setting demand. Also, it seems that the only genre that this type of film is acceptable in is horror, though I would love to see someone make an experimental film in another genre as found footage. So I decided to make this post pointing out a couple of the more major pros and cons of making a found footage film as a way of explaining my love/hate relationship with the sub-genre.

Pro: It is tailor made for horror.
As mentioned in my introduction, I don't think i have ever seen a non-horror film done as a found footage film. There are several reasons why this doesn't work for other genres. Found footage, due to the nature of fixed or semi fixed camera angles, feels claustrophobic since you can only look at what the camera person is looking at. This sensation wouldn't do much for a romance or action movie, but for a horror film, it enhances the experience by taking the audience into the scene. The cinematography is tricky in these films because you have to deal with cheap cameras (most of the time anyway), and thus, bad video quality. Pictures will often be blurry or distorted since the camera person is not supposed to be a professional, so framing is done poorly and sometimes a lot of action takes place away from the view of the audience. Once again, this adds to the uncomfortable feeling that can enhance horror by poking people in the "fear of the unknown" part of the psyche.

Con: Cinematography.
I know, I know, I just said that the distorted images and hard to see, claustrophobia inducing, messy shots can enhance the experience; but its insanely difficult to pull-off well. Its a hard balancing act. You have to be able to see enough action to keep the audience interested, but not distort the picture so much as to make the film unwatchable.

Pro: Costs go way down.
There are a lot of ways that shooting a found footage film can lower your necessary budget for a movie. You don't have to buy state of the art cameras, which can cost a small fortune. You don't need to pay for someone to score your movie, as a found footage film with a soundtrack edited in would kill immersion. You can also cut down on special effect costs by not always showing the monster or ghost or whatever.

Con: They have been nightmarishly overdone.
As the costs are lower more and more filmmakers have been making this kind of movie, and as such, the market is saturated with them. Sure, sometimes the moves are great (watch afflicted or V/H/S!) but most of the time you will get imitators (as with any popular style of movie) and people who didn't put any thought into the movie they were making. This means that the overwhelming majority of movies in this vein are fucking terrible.

Pro: Taking advantage of the saturated market.
Using the stereotype generated by dozens of found footage films to mess with the genre and take it to new places is one of the things that makes some of these movies so good. This is something that is hard to do prior to the sub-genre becoming big as there are little or no expectations, but as the number of films of this type grew, clever filmmakers did/are doing more to mess with some heads by doing things in a new and innovative way.

Con: Why is there a camera here in the first place!
This is a major problem for me. When you make a found footage film you have to give the characters a reason to be holding the camera. Sometimes this fits in well with the plot (see Afflicted, Grave Encounters, and Paranormal Activity 2), but most of the time the audience is left wondering "Why the fuck is that person still holding the camera! Why don't they stop filming the monsters and just run the fuck away!" This can kill the immersion that good horror tries to cultivate worse than any bad line of dialog (for me at least).

It is a hard thing to do found footage right. There are many ways found footage movies can fuck up, but if you get the right balance of story, realistic camerawork, and atmosphere down you should be able to make something good. So, go watch some horror movies, after all Halloween is coming up! I would suggest Troll Hunter, V/H/S, Paranormal Activity 1 and 2, Afflicted, and Grave Encounters. They may not be the best movies ever, but they are definitely worth of the watch.

YKWFA 2: Player Characters

Alright, I need to go full on squeeing geek for a minute here. This post has been building for a while and I've had a strong need to write about something that doesn't inspire me to try and hate the world to death, so bear with me. Our topic today is my absolute favorite sort of meta-reference: the PCing of a world. Let me explain.

PCing is a narrative device derived from meta-reference wherein the presence of a player character in the world irrevocably changes the structure of the world, typically by fucking over someone in the game who ought to be important. Sometimes this takes the form of ill explained gaps in a game's mechanics that end up illuminating possibly unintentional subplots. Sometimes its the result of active interplay in the story environment. We'll work through some examples and then discuss the value PCing has as a narrative device. (HUGE SPOILER WARNING OF DEATH)

One of the most explored instances of PCing in a game is the roles of "Ash" and "Gary" in the first generation Pokemon games. By all rights the rival character Gary should be a nearly uncontested champion. He's related to the greatest Pokemon researcher in the world, so he's had, or at least had access to, extensive exposure not only to Pokemon in general but to unique qualitative and quantitative information in the field. He's driven and highly talented. Gary as a character has skill, talent, motivation and resources in spades. In fact he accomplishes nearly everything the player does before the player even has the option. He's also over shadowed in every possible way by the PC.

In the beginning of the game Gary's beloved grandfather Prof. Oak doesn't even remember his name (a good example of a mechanical weakness leading to accidental story depth) and he's largely disregarded in favor of his "childhood friend" that no one seems to know anything about. Over the course of the rest of the game Gary develops an almost compulsive need to beat the PC that results in progressively greater failures at the player's hands despite being relatively successful in all other areas. The PC is even the direct cause of the only possible instances of a Pokemon dieing in a battle (though that is debated weirdly fiercely). When Gary does finally become League Champion the PC comes along, beats his ass yet again, and shames him once again before his grandfather. The PC spends the entire game robbing Gary of his every accomplishment and depriving him of the love of his only relative. My favorite part about this is that its not because the PC is an asshole, its because they can't help it. The presence of a PC in the world ensures that the world bends in their favor. Let's see if I can't clarify with a couple more examples.

Fallout 3 starts out in a Vault, which are constantly demonstrated to be long term social experiments, and follows the development of the player in the Vault environment. Butch is one of the children the player grows up with and his story is what we're interested in for this idea; because Butch is the hero of Vault 101. Or at least he would be if it weren't for the PC.

Your first shown encounter with Butch is at the PC's 9th birthday party, where it quickly becomes clear that Butch is a dickhead. In contrast, everyone else at the party, with the exception of the Overseer, thinks very highly of the player. We learn at this point that Butch's mother is a non-functioning alcoholic, providing one explanation for his aggression. At one point during the player's escape from the Vault one of the Overseer's journal entries becomes available in which he is learned to have been utilizing Butch as a means of social control within the Vault. Given the closed system of the Vault and the low population the Overseer is almost certainly grooming the boy for a position of authority not to mention almost certainly vetting him as the likely husband to his daughter Amata, the only female child in the Vault. So lets build the story, it might be a little weird if you haven't played the game, but I have. Lots. So take my word for it.

Butch, seeking support outside his worthless mother, tries to find solace from the other adults in the Vault, who are all preoccupied with the Outsider child (player). Finding no comfort in any of the adults he develops a hefty resentment for the PC as he projects his inability to earn affection onto the player, he instead establishes a "gang" out of the other male children in the Vault. His gang has trouble understanding his aggression toward the PC, but his clear pain on the subject and threats of violence erode their empathy for the player, after all they must have done something for Butch to hate them so much. Being the clear Alpha male of the Vault's children he reaches out to Amata, once again the only female kid, whose father is the only person to value him over the PC. Amata doesn't share that perspective, making Butch feel even further alienated and cementing his rage.

Now here's the thing. The Vaults are all experiments, and Vault 101's purpose is never actively expressed. We know that the culture of 101 is geared to establish the Overseer as a sort of demigod, carrying on the practices that stave off the certain death of the Wasteland. Its not hard to imagine that Butch was meant to take on a leadership role in the Vault. He's charismatic (though his charisma becomes tainted by his aggression), he's strong, and he is highly capable of establishing and maintaining connections with the Vaultdwellers. The mere presence of the PC denies him even the opportunity to explore anything other than his own resentment.

Perhaps the most prominent example of PCing occurs in the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Lonesome Road. In it the player is contacted by a fellow Courier called Ulysses who bears a hell of a grudge. Over the course of the story Ulysses describes both his and the player's actions as Couriers before the events of the game and why Ulysses holds such hate for the player. It turns out that before the events of the game the player essentially tore the country in half. Basically on a whim. Ulysses became obsessed with this act, with what it means to be a Courier. What he finds, what he describes, is a PC. An active, self-actualized being in a world where they are surrounded by people completely at their mercy. The events he describes are the results of PCs in a world without PCs. What Ulysses describes, in both his previous actions and the actions of the player, are what it looks like to the outside world when a PC is active. This is, to me the best description of what a PC is in a game world.

In most games the player is largely lead about by the story, but from a narrative perspective they are all but gods. Their actions fundamentally alter the structure of the world. They are free to act in ways that other actors in the world are not, and the consequences of their actions reverberate through everything. That is why this device is so beautiful to me. By its nature it half-steps the player out of the game and gives context to their actions. It takes relatively simple choices and gives us a chance to consider their consequences, adding depth and engaging us in ways the game otherwise couldn't.

Know When to Fold 'em.

In previous posts I have written a little bit about why I love the crowdfunding of projects. For those of you who don't want to read another blog post; I like that people don't need to go through traditional channels to make a project happen. There is a downside to this though. What if the project gets funded, but then fails. Worse yet, what if the project gets funded then drops of the face of the earth with all that money.

I would like to deal with the scam side of this first as there is already a solution on one side of this as of a couple days ago. Kickstarter has changed its terms of service to make sure that projects have to give updates to explain whats going on, and also state that people who don't finish a project may be legally responsible (if the backers choose to sue) for the loss of backers cash and they will have to return any of the money they have left. I like this in theory, but it also adds more stress to people to succeed, which is a double edged sword. It may make people work harder to make sure they produce what they said they would, but only if they work well with the added pressure. Ultimately I think this will reduce the amount of scammers, which is the biggest problem, so one step at a time I guess.

The other side of this is what happens when a project isn't finished but they have spent the money in development. Unfortunately, I can point to recent events as my inspiration on this topic. Double Fine's game Spacebase DF-9 is getting canceled. This sucks, but for reasons other than just being a game that will never be finished. The game went out on greenlight, a part of Valve's Steam store in which games that are in beta or alpha can sell themselves on the market as "early access" games in order to get more funding. In return the purchaser gets to play the game, give suggestions (which a surprising amount of companies listen to) and have the game already when it is finished. But when a company like Double Fine, which has an impressive pedigree and track record, fails to complete a project, it brings to light the ugly side of game development.

Games sometimes get scrapped. if this was not an early access game, it would have just been announced and then we would never hear about it again. It happens all the time in the gaming industry. Early release just makes the alpha side of projects more visible. Projects fall apart for any number of reasons, anywhere from funding falling through to an excess of ambition. Unfortunately Greenlight doesn't guarantee that you will get a finished project, just an early build, so if the game never gets finished you don't get anything else. Tim Schafer, the founder of Double Fine Productions, said that they would release the full source code for the game so that people who wanted to continue to add to it could, which is more than most companies would do. But, this doesn't address the issue of what happens to the people who initially back the game. Backing an unfinished project, no matter if it is a video game or a start-up company, is a gamble. You are giving money to someone to show that you believe that what they are doing is something worth supporting. IF you get something out of it that's a bonus.

"I paid for a game, so I want my game" is a popular sentiment on the Steam forums right now, and it is an understandable position, even though I think it's wrong. By investing in a greenlight game or crowdfund project you are taking a risk, as in any investment situation. You are not buying a product. The horrific, systematic failure to understand that has lead to no end of entitled bullshit. You are placing money on a bet that the project will finish, if you are right you get a copy of the game, if you are wrong you get nothing. At least in this case they are still going to be turning the project loose on the fan community,  which honestly is more than we ought to expect.

If you buy a game on early access, or really any project on any crowdfunding site, make sure you are OK with losing the money you put up, or that you are OK with the project as it is presented at the time of supporting, as in the case of greenlight games. Expecting anything more is a misstep on the part of the supporter.

Memento Mori

Death is a strange thing. Most people fear it, many obsess over it, some fight it, a few embrace it, but it comes for everyone. I think at some point everyone considers what they want to do with their life, what, if anything, they want to leave behind. That's interesting to me.

A friend recently expressed concern for my health. Now, I have a preference for a well measured vice and an aversion to unnecessary discomfort, so her concern was understandable. That's not to say that I'm some Baron Harkonnen impersonator; raping slaveboys and wheezing while cultivating my own disgust, I'm just not as fit as I could possibly be. It occurred to me that, other than a pervasive rage and a severe, genetic chemical imbalance, I live pretty damn well; so her concern for my health probably wasn't a quality of life concern. It was a seeming concern that my fat/sassyness would result in an untimely and appropriate end. Which was a sentiment I found to be more than a little presumptuous as she seemed to be placing my potential longevity over my enjoyment of my existence. Its not the first time I've faced down this specific existential quandary, but it never gets any less troublesome.

There are two reasons to favor longevity. The first is a fear of death, which while understandable from a "fear of the unknown" perspective, is ridiculous in pretty much all other areas. The second is a desire to leave your mark on the world, which has always been an issue for me. For one, I'm a cynical, frustrated, rage-aholic, there is no mark I could leave on the world that would be good for anyone, myself included. Second, Ozymandias. Not only are the endeavors of your life transient, even if they do survive time will change them far beyond your intents, usually in ways that would lead you to despair. I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to make the world better, I'm saying that the greater your success the less it will matter in the long run. Not even accounting for the fact that actually setting out to change the world is a motivation of such colossal hubris that I can't believe that the mind behind it would accomplish anything good.

Death is the great equalizer, it comes for us all. I find that beautiful. Before it comes for me I would rather know that I sought joy for myself and the people I care about rather than spend my life seeking Pyrrhic victories and trying to fend off the inevitable. Life is the longest thing that you will ever be involved in, and I don't see the point in wasting it in toil.

Teaching The Controversy

So there is a group of heathens calling themselves "scientists" who claim that the world wasn't created by some all powerful super-being, but was instead the result of matter just forming together in ways that physical laws dictated that they would. These "scientists" also refuse to teach anything other than their ridiculous, closed-minded science. Its just based on generations of "accumulated evidence" and "rationally explains the perceivable universe". What do they know, with their silly, self-consistent, observable phenomena. Even though there are other scientists (probably real ones!) who can show that the world was indeed created as it is now by an intelligent designer. What about teaching intelligent design? Shouldn't you teach the only other side of the argument?

Ugh...OK, that was bad and I am sorry. I feel dirty even saying all of that sarcastically. Incidentally I agree with one point the people who advocate for "teaching the controversy". If you don't want to leave out any "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the world you should teach kids about it. Where I differ though is in my feelings towards this is that I think that if you are going to say "hey, science might be wrong!" then you need to give equal time to EVERY other option out there. Especially when they are more badass than, while also being just as plausible as, yours. Don't agree? Does your god kill shit tons of frost giants in a bloody, multi-dimensional hammer war? No. The Christian creation myth is so boring! Magical Sky Daddy spends a most of a week making toys, then takes a nap. My favorite part was when he took a nap!

And so with that in mind I offer the following:

Teaching The Controversy Part One of Many: The Aztecs!

Most of you readers will know, or think you know, something about the Aztecs. You will probably know that they lived in Mexico prior to the Spanish invasion. You will also probably know them from their enthusiastic appreciation for ritual sacrifice. The origin myth actually explains why this was such a big deal for them. As with most mythology we have many different versions of the myth. Between an almost exclusively oral history, a violent takeover of the continent, and the nasty habit of playing literary analysis with mythology a lot of the information wasn't well kept and what we have today probably differs from the traditional source material. This also means that if I say something that contradicts what you have heard it might be that I read a different version of the myth. I am also just going to be hitting the high points, as I would need to write a book to do these myths justice. So if you want to learn more about the myth/even more about the context behind it, I suggest this.

In the beginning there was nothing except the void. After a while, getting bored of nothingness, a god created itself, Ometecuhtli(male) or Omecihuatl(female). This one being hermaphroditic god-party  represented duality. It was order and chaos, good and evil, light and dark, male and female. This god made sweet love to itself and produced four more gods, each representing a cardinal direction and certain aspects of reality. The god of the West was Tezcatlipoca (sometimes referred to as representing North), who represents judgement, night, deceit, sorcery, and earth. East was Quetzalcoatl(sometimes he is referred to as West instead), who represented light, mercy, and the wind. South was Huitzilpochtli the god who represented war. North was Xipe Toltec (sometimes referred to as representing the East) who ruled over agriculture, vegetation, disease, spring, the making of jewelry, and cutting off people's skin and wearing it about town.

These four began to create a ton more stuff. Water, more gods, and a sea monster named Cipactli. Cipactli was cool because it was a giant (as big as the entire world as it is now) crocodile/fish monster that had mouths at all of its joints and ate everything that went into the water. This behavior introduced a problem to the gods. Everything that they created would fall into the water and be insta-gibbed by the giant sea monster they had created. The solution to this conundrum was simple. Kill Cipactli and turn its corpse into the land. Cipactli's head was turned into the 13 layers of heaven, its body became the earth, and its tail became the 9 layers of hell. During this fight one of the gods, Tezcatlipoca, lost his leg.

So now that the gods could create stuff that would remain uneaten, they went to town. At this point they needed to create a source of energy for the world. This would end up being the sun. Unfortunately an object like the sun was beyond their powers of creation, because, unlike some gods I could mention, the Aztec deities knew when to stop showing off. The unfortunate solution to this was that one of the gods would need to sacrifice themselves to do this. They ended up picking Tezcatlipoca to become the sun, which he did. Unfortunately his sun was only half a sun, either because he had lost his leg, and as such was incomplete, or because he was the god of the night. At this point the first humans were created from ash and were all giants. The gods provided these humans with acorns to eat. Then all hell broke loose when Quetzalcoatl got all jelly that Tezcatlipoca got to be the sun and beat him out of the sky with a club. A now very angry Tazcatlipoca commanded his bad-ass jaguar army to kill all of the humans. Thus ending the first sun.

Quetzalcoatl decided that he would be the second sun and he and the other gods made more humans (this time humans where a more normal size and ate pinon or pine nuts) prior to him becoming the sun. The second generation of humans became lax in their duties and stopped worshiping the gods. In retribution for this slight, Tezcatlipoca (whose domains included sorcery and judgement) turned all of humanity into monkeys. Quetzalcoatl, who was a fan of humans but apparently had an unrelenting monkey-hate, got angry and blew all of the monkeys away with a hurricane after which he stepped down as sun to make more people.

The next god to volunteer as a sun was Tlaloc, the god of the rain and water. While he was being the sun, Tezcatlipoca stole Tlaloc's wife, Xochiquetzal who was the goddess of sex, flowers, and corn. In his grief at this situation Tlaloc refused to send rain to the humans. After a long period of draught, the humans begged and begged for rain. In anger, Tlaloc sent a rain of fire to earth, burning it to ashes. The gods then reconstructed the earth from these ashes. Another version of the third sun has the world burning to ash thanks to a another major fight between Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca.

Tlaloc's sister (or second wife depending on the version), Chalchiuhtlicue, became the next version of the sun. She was apparently very kind to the people. Once again jealousy caused other gods (you will never guess who) to want her to not be the sun. Sources differ on what happens next, but either Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca beat her out of the sky with clubs, at which point either the sky opens and floods the earth, killing all of humanity; or Tezcatlipoca tells the people that she is only being kind to get their praise, and she was so hurt by this accusation that she wept blood for 52 years, flooding the earth and killing everyone.

Before the next sun could be made, Quetzalcoatl made his way to the underworld to get all of the human bones there in order to remake humanity. Before he went he was warned that Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the underworld. was never to be trusted. So, after Quetzalcoatl got the bones, he ran away with them as fast as possible, as to limit the time he was in the underworld. As he ran he tripped and broke all of the bones (which is why humans today are of varying sizes) but managed to recover all of the, now shattered, bones. Quetzalcoatl and the other gods put the bones in a depression and poured their own blood over them, causing humans to crawl out of the bloody pool 4 days later. at which point the fifth sun, our current sun, had been made.

There are two stories in which the fifth sun came to be. In the first, two gods offer themselves up as the sun. The first, Tecuciztecatl, is a proud and rich god who chickens out at the last minute. Nanahuatzin, who is depicted as frail and sickly, decides that he will do it instead and turns into the sun. Tecuciztecatl, shamed by this also turns into the sun. The earth is to hot with two suns so the other gods take a rabbit and throw it over the face of Tecuciztecatl dimming him and turning him into the moon. Since Nanahuatzin is weak the other gods give their blood to him to keep him in motion and thus ensure that the earth will survive. To make up for this deficit humans need to give blood back. Some gods like full human sacrifice while others, like Quetzalcoatl, prefer bloodletting as it doesn't kill the donor.

The second version of this is that the fifth sun is Huitzilpochtli. Omecihuatl (the dual god/goddess) had more children, who became the stars. These children were jealous of Huitzilpochitli and they wage a constant war with Huitzilpochtli. This constant struggle is the day and night, with daybreak meaning that Huitzilpochtli is winning, and nightfall is when the stars (the Tzizimitl led by the goddess of the moon, Coyolxauhqui) are winning. This war is aided by blood being sacrificed to Huitzilpochtli and the other gods and goddesses (though the reasons for sacrificing for the other gods are varied).

You may have noticed a pretty significant life/death/rebirth pattern in there. That cycle is a huge part of Aztec mythology and played a major role in their culture. It's interesting and awesome, once again you should definitely look up more information.

So there's the long and (not so) short of it; the origin of earth and humanity according to the Aztecs. I hoped you enjoyed this as much as I did. I will continue this in the future since my hands are dead now from all the typing.

Sources: Here, here, and here

Discriminating Tastes

Discrimination ties in to pretty much everything we've been talking about lately, really pretty much every issue society faces on some level or another. Now, we've kinda danced around this as a direct topic for a while, but I'm shit on the dance floor and its time to approach this.

There is a simple exercise anyone can do to determine if they're engaging in this particular variety of asshatery: if you swap the active noun in your argument to the contextually appropriate noun describing you, and the argument then sounds ridiculous, you are being a cunt. A fair example would be, say, refusing to allow heterosexual couples to adopt children. Sound pretty fucking stupid? Yet it somehow slides through when laws are passed denying that right to homosexuals. The only way this makes sense is if you in someway believe that the number of cocks available during child-rearing is a critical factor. For the record if you believe that cocks ought to play any role, other than possibly creation, in a child's life you need to seek some pretty significant help, you fucking pedophile you. The idea of men only making 75 cents to every dollar a woman in the same position makes piss you off? That's because someone's pay being effected by absolutely anything other than performance is fucking discrimination. And no, it doesn't fucking matter that women can get maternity leave, because only allowing women to take time off to be a parent is discrimination. It's also a pretty scathing indictment of the conservative rallying cry for "family values"; but that's a different post entirely.

That rule is essentially a forced empathy hack; actively, if only linguistically, putting you in the position of an opposing party. It requires that for a moment you look beyond the tip of your nose and realize that other people are, indeed, people. Its not terribly difficult and, with even a little reflection, its pretty effective at making valuable points. Unfortunately, a life unexamined is still far easier lived. Discrimination is pervasive because knee-jerk solipsism doesn't require any effort, which is notably less than the any-reflection-at-all required for empathy. Sadly the problem isn't just discrimination, it's the oversensitivity towards discrimination.

A while back there was a bit of a tiff regarding the game Cards Against Humanity, in that a small group of women felt that the game was discriminatory against women due to the creators all being male. They've created an alternate set of cards for the game composed from a feminine perspective, some of which are just as funny as, if not better than, cards in the base game; while others are blithe, smug social commentary on the level of a shitty hashtag. While I will completely admit that CAH can be incredibly offensive (no matter how amusing it may be), it's a game made by a small group of friends who happen to be male. I can't speak to their inclusion policy but I can say that in most friend groups exclusion is less a matter of active internal policy and more a concern of external interest. I don't know them, they could very well be douchebags, hell given the game they made its not even unlikely, but I can say that, without knowing them personally, assuming that they are hostile to women is discrimination. In the same way that assuming a group of women making a game about bras, periods and social justice were hostile to men would be discrimination.

Socially, discrimination is a fraught, nuanced issue affecting everyone in one way or another. Layers upon layers of social programming and ill conceived sub-cultural bullshit force people of varying descriptions into various unpleasant roles, (in the most understated way I can think to say that). But individually all it takes to overcome this disgusting, myopic cockheadedness is just the slightest bit of examination and honesty. We all owe it to ourselves and each other to not be such fucking cunts.

This Is The Song That Never Ends

Eshi and I have been talking recently about something that we have dubbed "the shonen problem". For those of you who do not know, shonen is a brand of manga/anime that focuses on audiences of boys in their early teens and up. Some of the most popular anime falls into this classification: Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach, and the like. Now, "the shonen problem" doesn't necessarily only happen in shonen, but is something that is very apparent in them. Basically it is a problem that centers on escalation. Basically the story lines always follow this rough pattern with very minimal changes: hero fights bad guy, bad guy beats hero, hero trains to become more powerful, good guy fights the bad guy and wins. This, as a generic story arc, isn't terrible. The problem arises when this pattern is continued ad nauseam.

Every new villain has to be more powerful, every new case has to be more dramatic and convoluted, every new disease has to be more obscure or obfuscated, otherwise the difficulty of  manufacturing a satisfying climax is likely to outstrip the skill of the writers. Its way easier to write the same essential story over and over, changing faces and increasing disparities, than to inject novel character development. This means that the longer a series runs the more outlandish this escalation gets to the point where the audience can't help but become desensitized. Dragon Ball Z was 291 episodes of people getting more and more powerful in a way that shows that all of their previous training wasn't good enough. This is a problem that happens when you try to extend the length of a series artificially. A good story will have a message or point, but this type of "development" removes from that message in favor of perpetuating a brand.

Character death is the most poignant version of this. Character death ought  to be terminal for a storyline, even if it isn't permanent for the character. Death is something that needs to carry a lot of emotional weight, when you take that weight away from a character to justify continuing a story you diminish the character, the story, and what death means. The main character from DBZ, Goku, sacrifices himself on multiple occasions to save the universe and defeat the bad guy, but each and every time is resurrected. This removes the value behind the sacrifice. The impact of a main character who dies is huge, something that people shouldn't see coming, and all of that impact goes away if you bring that hero back. If you know that you will come back to life when you die there is no reason to not sacrifice yourself and the sacrifice is less a price one must pay and more a minor inconvenience.

American comics do this too, there is no end to escalation in story lines for most Marvel and DC comics. Superman is the worst offender in my opinion, and not just because he has been around since the 1930s but because of a trend he started in American comics. Superman getting resurrected was great for the writers in terms of continuing what is essentially a brand name, but it removed the value from his death at the hands of Doomsday. Superman is essentially a deity in the DC universe, and the death of someone who held that much sway would have changed the way comics where written if it wasn't for the cop out, which changed the way comics are written as well, just in a much worse direction. It was both lazy and manipulative and set up a precedent for other writers to follow. Comic writers didn't need to make up a new character to replace the dead hero after their emotionally charged death nor write any story lines which dealt with the long term effect of a dead superhero on their friends, family, or civilians who relied on the protection of the hero.

Really this is a problem that happens with non-episodic series in general. The X Files started strong from a creative standpoint, but the less episodic it became the more it grew to rely on threat escalation and left-field "plot twists".  Movies, TV, comics, and anime are all industries that have multiple goals, one of which seems to be disproportionately prioritized above artistic integrity: profit. I have talked about this in similar terms before, but I just keep seeing how pervasive this problem really is in popular culture and it always depresses me. These things are modern myths, and as Eshi, and countless others, have pointed out, myths are how we establish social values; trading out the core of our cultural values in order to pander to consumerism is pretty fucking disappointing.

Sometimes Its Cruel to be Kind

I watched Snowpiercer recently and it brought to mind kind of a nasty little issue. For those even more behind then myself on contemporary films, the basic premise of the movie is that the world has ended in a catastrophic ice age and the only survivors are passengers on a magical super train going around the world. Most of these survivors are people who payed to be saved and they reside in the relatively luxurious fronty bits of the train. Others fought their way on last minute and mange to eek out a rather miserable existence of hand-me-downs and brutal opportunities in the tail of the train. without getting into too deep into spoiler country, the things that people did both to stow away and to survive in the tail are pretty fucking nasty. Especially before infrastructure was developed to allow for the excess population to even barely survive. The issue that arises for me in this instance is: does it constitute mercy?

The folks in the tail are fed enough to sustain themselves, in the form of "protein blocks". They have bunks to sleep in and copious amounts of free time, as they aren't trusted/don't have the skills to serve the train. They're also kept in filthy conditions, don't receive actual medical care, apparently have their children taken from them on a whim and are subject to daily abuse from an armed and aggressive police force. Sure they're some of the last people alive in the world, but they aren't even slaves, they aren't even cattle, those things are in some way useful, valuable. They apparently only exist to give the people in the rest of the train someone to feel superior to. Now in the movie their survival is framed as a perpetuated mercy, after all the deified antagonist who owns the train did set up infrastructure to allow them their meager existence. But that infrastructure took not insignificant time to establish, time that occurred after they where already on the train. Sealed in the tail. With no resources. Time in which these desperate people where left entirely to their own devices for survival. I don't even really have to go into spoilers here, you can imagine how fucked up people can get during two fucking months without anything.

I would argue that just having people in that position is fucking cruel as shit and completely justifies very nearly anything the people in the tail do to get themselves out of it. Now, yes, this is essentially the basic thrust of the entire film; but it really caught me that everyone not in the tail takes that mercy as gratis. They have decided that the folks at the back should damn well be grateful for even being alive. So if they're abused and degraded, so what if they have no rights. At least they aren't dead. Its a painfully common perspective amongst the oppressive classes, that those who are oppressed should essentially be grateful for the opportunity. To me this is the core of classicism and really the moral of the story. I think what it comes down to for me is you don't get to decide if your own action is merciful. I don't even think you have the ability to decide if your own action  was good. Once other people get involved you aren't just acting, you're acting upon.

I'm not saying that some people aren't ungrateful cunts. What I am saying is that "letting" someone live isn't necessarily merciful, and in fact just the linguistic basis of that statement implies cruelty. That describes a position of near absolute authority over the most basic aspects of someone else's existence that can in no way be positive. The most charitable thing its even remotely possible to say about that mindset is that its condescending. Being merciful shouldn't just not be about you, it can't. Like structurally. Mercy is intrinsically about doing right by other people, we can't forget that, no matter how bad things get.