I wrote this before the awful murder of David Amess, so have been sitting on it for a bit wondering if I’m being unreasonable. But watching some quarters attempt to use such a tragedy to supress genuine criticism of those (on both sides of the political divide) whose actions are leading to the enrichment of themselves and their donors and the ruination of so many other things made me think that actually, I’m not being unreasonable to expect a certain level of decency and care, and not for it to be okay for companies owned by overseas interests to dump raw sewage into our watercourses in the interests of their shareholders (yes, I know there's supposedly been a U-turn. We'll see.) So, I published it anyway:
Get back to work. Playtime’s over. Everyone knows that we’ve just been dossing off during the pandemic. Working from home? Give me a break. They worked from the office in the ‘40s with bombs raining down like explosive confetti (except, they didn’t; they very sensibly hid when the bombs actually fell). What do you mean the war wasn’t contagious? What’s that got to do with it? What do you mean they didn’t have home computers or wi-fi? Things have changed you say? Progress you say? Progress isn’t for the likes of you milado. Progress is the problem, it’s why you lot go around thinking you should be free to be who you feel you are. Get back in the boxes we’ve always put you in. Too many minorities these days.
Get back in the office. No you’re not going to be paid more. You should be grateful to spend your time and money on commuting, parking and lunch instead of doing your work from home. Unless you’re a woman. Then you can stay at home and do caring, cooking and housework. Like in the good old days. Care begins at home donchano, and with three-quarters of people on Carer’s Allowance being women, we can force women to do more of that at-home stuff they always used to. Win-win!
Never mind that the last couple of years has been such a strain on the wellbeing of the majority of the population; we pay lip service to your mental health and that should be enough. Anyway, the best thing for mental health is to work, work, work. Work unto death; it’s the future! Look; even the opposition agrees. When you felt mildly hopeful for the chance of a better world when you were younger, you were just being naïve. Childish. It’s time to grow up and get back to work.
Just look at me. Born rich. Inherited wealth. Funnelled into investments and offshore so I don’t ever have to pay fair taxes; to, shudder to think, contribute. That’s for you to do. Work and pay tax. Not my fault you weren’t born rich. We’re all in this together you know. The same storm, that is, not the same boat. I’ve got a yacht.
At least you’ve got a boat. Or a dinghy. It’s more than some should have. Migrants? Shirkers. They don’t deserve a boat. Send the boats back. Not our fault if they drown – I promise you’ll face no legal consequences for letting people drown. If I had my way, I’d chuck you in the slammer for savin’ ‘em. Up is down, you know? Let Europe have them. Isn’t Europe safe enough? What do you mean most of them probably speak English as a second or third language and not other European languages, so it stands to reason they might feel more comfortable here? Don’t they know they speak English in Europe too? Even though it’s usually in a funny accent. Let Europe have them. Many European countries already take in loads more than we do? We don’t take our fair share of refugees? So what? We’re closed. Too many as it is. Of course, nobody to drive the lorries, or work in the hospitals, or pick the fruit. Still, good to know we’ve taken back control of all that rotten fruit eh? Makes you all misty eyed to see all that control of failing supply chains, and those farming and fishing industries that have been decimated. At least they’ve been decimated on our terms, yeah? Makes you feel proper patriotic it does.
Anyway, get back to work. Up is down. Wrong is right. Freedom is slavery, and the future of humanity, to borrow from Mr Orwell, is a boot stamping on a human face forever. ‘Cos I’m the boot and you’re the face, so I’ll never let you get even.
Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):
Arcade Fire: My Body is a Cage – “I’m living in an age, that calls darkness light.”
Saturday, October 30, 2021
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
Still they do nothing.
About a fortnight or so ago, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was published. It reports that there are visible signs of climate change all over the globe and that those effects will continue to intensify. It noted that without immediate massive change to reduce carbon emissions everywhere, there isn’t any chance to prevent the climate warming by more than 1.5C. Doesn’t sound like much does it, but in actuality, it means catastrophe on a global scale.
It made the news for a bit, but a great deal of the reporting tended towards opinion pieces. Climate change denial has pivoted in recent years from ‘it’s not happening’ to ‘we can’t afford it’ or ‘there’s nothing we can do about it’. We can do plenty. We can stop emitting carbon. I don’t mean me and you – our individual contributions to this, like recycling tins, or watering your flowers with your washing up water, or punishing your anus with recycled toilet paper, they’re all great, but without the rest of it it’s a fart in a windstorm. One of the best (I use the word ‘best’ here in the most sarcastic manner possible) things BP ever did for themselves was to start this whole individual carbon footprint thing as it gaslights us into believing we could solve this if only we made enough small individual changes. Don’t misunderstand me, I think small individual changes are great, and when enough of us make them they can have huge impacts, but in actuality, without massive systemic change to go with it, it’s merely a louder, more intense fart in the aforementioned windstorm.
Not long after the report was published, the Spectator, that bastion of balance, and not a far right wing mouthpiece at all, ran a cover with a picture of a hole into which money is falling, bemoaning the ‘cost of net zero’. First, net zero is bullshit – it’s governments and companies trying to offset carbon emissions. But they’re still emitting the carbon. Climate change doesn’t give one shit about your nonsense economic wriggling. Nobody talks about the cost of not halting carbon emissions, which will be, at the least, billions of lives and at the most, well, everything.
The cost isn’t actually that much either; in the UK and the US it is estimated that the cost of converting to a non-carbon setting is less than what is spent on military budgets each year. And yet, they continue to do nothing. Nothing but organise summits that accomplish nothing and talk about far future net zero targets that shift the responsibility on to the next cabinet/generation.
THERE IS NO MORE ROOM TO SHIFT THE RESPONSIBILITY.
THIS SHOULD BE EVERY GOVERNMENTS' AND EVERY COMPANY’S NUMBER ONE PRIORITY. BAR NONE.
IT SHOULD BE FRONT PAGE NEWS EVERYWHERE UNTIL IT’S UNAVOIDABLE – HALF-ARSED REPORTING IS ONE OF THE MAJOR REASONS SO FEW PEOPLE GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE IMPENDING COLLAPSE OF THE ECOLOGICAL NETWORK WE RELY ON.
Spend the money to roll out the infrastructure. Install solar panels on every roof, and windfarms in every coastal water. Make every car electric. Replace every petrol station with recharge points.
It’s a start, isn’t it?
None of that is a perfect solution, and there will be some problems with it, but we have run out of time to wait for the market to provide a low cost, profitable, perfect solution. The market won’t. The market will let us all die as long as the profits keep rolling in, right until there’s no more food.
Think I’m overreacting? Being alarmist? Negative? The tipping points we’ve been warned to look out for are starting to tip. The Amazon rainforest now emits more carbon than it absorbs. We’re now seeing visible signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream (something we have known for a while is at risk). If that goes you can kiss goodbye to UK agriculture and expect to start relying on imports for all of our food, which thanks to our newly-minted non-EU status, might be a tad tricky. (Also, I know I keep linking to Guardian articles re: climate change. It’s not bias, it’s that no other source is doing a whole lot of climate reporting, even now.)
We’ve known about this for over 100 years. Perhaps almost 200. We’ve had decades to incrementally ween ourselves off our reliance on fossil fuels. But we’ve suffered an endless misinformation campaign waged by companies, media outlets and governments that rely on the profits generated by burning fossil fuels that caused us to question if it even existed.
It made the news for a bit, but a great deal of the reporting tended towards opinion pieces. Climate change denial has pivoted in recent years from ‘it’s not happening’ to ‘we can’t afford it’ or ‘there’s nothing we can do about it’. We can do plenty. We can stop emitting carbon. I don’t mean me and you – our individual contributions to this, like recycling tins, or watering your flowers with your washing up water, or punishing your anus with recycled toilet paper, they’re all great, but without the rest of it it’s a fart in a windstorm. One of the best (I use the word ‘best’ here in the most sarcastic manner possible) things BP ever did for themselves was to start this whole individual carbon footprint thing as it gaslights us into believing we could solve this if only we made enough small individual changes. Don’t misunderstand me, I think small individual changes are great, and when enough of us make them they can have huge impacts, but in actuality, without massive systemic change to go with it, it’s merely a louder, more intense fart in the aforementioned windstorm.
Not long after the report was published, the Spectator, that bastion of balance, and not a far right wing mouthpiece at all, ran a cover with a picture of a hole into which money is falling, bemoaning the ‘cost of net zero’. First, net zero is bullshit – it’s governments and companies trying to offset carbon emissions. But they’re still emitting the carbon. Climate change doesn’t give one shit about your nonsense economic wriggling. Nobody talks about the cost of not halting carbon emissions, which will be, at the least, billions of lives and at the most, well, everything.
The cost isn’t actually that much either; in the UK and the US it is estimated that the cost of converting to a non-carbon setting is less than what is spent on military budgets each year. And yet, they continue to do nothing. Nothing but organise summits that accomplish nothing and talk about far future net zero targets that shift the responsibility on to the next cabinet/generation.
THERE IS NO MORE ROOM TO SHIFT THE RESPONSIBILITY.
THIS SHOULD BE EVERY GOVERNMENTS' AND EVERY COMPANY’S NUMBER ONE PRIORITY. BAR NONE.
IT SHOULD BE FRONT PAGE NEWS EVERYWHERE UNTIL IT’S UNAVOIDABLE – HALF-ARSED REPORTING IS ONE OF THE MAJOR REASONS SO FEW PEOPLE GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE IMPENDING COLLAPSE OF THE ECOLOGICAL NETWORK WE RELY ON.
Spend the money to roll out the infrastructure. Install solar panels on every roof, and windfarms in every coastal water. Make every car electric. Replace every petrol station with recharge points.
It’s a start, isn’t it?
None of that is a perfect solution, and there will be some problems with it, but we have run out of time to wait for the market to provide a low cost, profitable, perfect solution. The market won’t. The market will let us all die as long as the profits keep rolling in, right until there’s no more food.
Think I’m overreacting? Being alarmist? Negative? The tipping points we’ve been warned to look out for are starting to tip. The Amazon rainforest now emits more carbon than it absorbs. We’re now seeing visible signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream (something we have known for a while is at risk). If that goes you can kiss goodbye to UK agriculture and expect to start relying on imports for all of our food, which thanks to our newly-minted non-EU status, might be a tad tricky. (Also, I know I keep linking to Guardian articles re: climate change. It’s not bias, it’s that no other source is doing a whole lot of climate reporting, even now.)
We’ve known about this for over 100 years. Perhaps almost 200. We’ve had decades to incrementally ween ourselves off our reliance on fossil fuels. But we’ve suffered an endless misinformation campaign waged by companies, media outlets and governments that rely on the profits generated by burning fossil fuels that caused us to question if it even existed.
And still…in the face of absolute undeniability, they do nothing.
Saturday, July 31, 2021
Englishness.
From Shakespeare's Hamlet.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!
In form and moving how express and admirable!
In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!
 |
| If you ask some people, they'll tell you this isn't the issue... |
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty!
 |
| Nor this... |
In form and moving how express and admirable!
 |
| This neither... |
In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!
 |
| They'll tell you this is the issue. |
Man delights not me.
Friday, July 9, 2021
So, the worst of all possible combinations then.
At this point, I’m not convinced there’s a right way to resolve the situation we’re in. If we’d have acted sooner, more decisively and for longer with proper support and enacted a working test, trace and isolate system, then things would most likely be, if not peachy, a good deal peachier than they are. But shoulda woulda coulda ain’t gonna do a whole lot about the now. Not that I think it’s okay, what happened; taking the opportunity to give out contracts to donors and friends – which has proven to be most lucrative, while they were crying out for PPE and then attempting to gaslight half a nation by claiming there never was a shortage.
But what’s going on now is a little difficult to fathom. Basically treating it like flu, even though it’s not flu. Claiming we’ll just have to live with it and a whole load of people will just have to die, because, you know, Costa’s been low on profits for a while. Which is obviously worse.
Well, ok, but better to try that when we have more of us vaccinated yes? Because you know, this is a virus that mutates as it spreads. So just letting it go nuts on a partially vaccinated population means a good chance of more variants that the vaccines are not effective against that are more deadly to more people and are more transmissible. It’s already happening; hello delta variant. Then there’s the mounting evidence that surviving it isn’t just a case of ‘that’s it, well done, off you go’; it affects the brain and the body in ways that won’t be clear for a long time, not forgetting long covid, which is present in all age groups, children included. No other country in the world is trying this experiment of just giving up and letting the population just get infected and see what happens, and it seems to be baffling the international community (I admit I laughed when CNN compared our PM to Lord Farquaad). It is entirely unsurprising that the new health secretary is a mega fan of Ayn Rand, and I don’t see why we should be happy for them to take this risk with the lives of people they are entrusted to safeguard. Of course, they’ve left us with little alternative other than to forever go on the lock-down/reopen/lock-down/reopen carousel. Might it just have been a bit better to have held on until the vaccine roll out was complete, or near as dammit? It’s weird how anti-lockdown folk tend to also be anti-vaccine folk. So what, your preferred option is for as many people to die as possible? Why?
Being sick of experts unfortunately doesn’t stop them usually being right. Ignoring expertise has led to the most bonkers strategy to deal with the virus; to leave the EU in the most nonsensical manner imaginable and I’ve no doubt that scientific expertise will continue to be ignored regarding climate change.
Like some kind of Sunnydale-on-Sea (it genuinely does look like a hellmouth), we’ve actually managed to literally set the ocean on fire, and we’ve allowed a small town in Canada to literally burn down to the ground (note the ridiculous journalistic standards on that article that still make no mention whatsoever linking the temperatures and wildfires with climate change – the media are fully complicit in this being as bad as it is), but we still won’t move away from our dependence on fossil fuels with the urgency that was required decades ago. The response to this, and the growing protest movement from Extinction Rebellion? Change the law so the right to protest is rendered powerless and, according to the recently-passed bill, noisy protests can carry a 10 year jail term. So you can now be jailed for longer for, say, pulling down the statue of a slave trader than for rape. Well, they shouldn’t have inconvenienced people trying to grab a Costa should they? (Granted, the change in the law is likely also in response to Black Lives Matter in addition to Extinction Rebellion, but you know what? Black lives do matter, and they are still largely treated as though they don’t, or at least that they matter less, and until that changes and there is some kind of proper social justice, there are going to be those protesting about it.) Those in power call themselves libertarians? When they want to jail you for a decade for disagreeing with the endless corruption and incompetence that is leading to the actual end of our civilisation as we know it and the death and forced migration of billions of people (not as far away into the future as you would like to think)? I don’t think that word ‘libertarian’ means what they think it means.
Somewhere in the multiverse there is a reality where Murdoch, Koch, Rothmere et al don’t have the kind of influence they have here and we don’t have such a significant portion of the population that are so enamoured with populism, nationalism and jingoism, or so happy to get apoplectic about whatever culture war nonsense is used to distract them that they are happy, to borrow from Christopher Nolan, to watch the world burn so long as they can be mean about a princess from another country with brown skin. A reality where the statement given by an expert that has spent their entire life studying a subject isn’t given the same weight as some fool that’s read something online and now thinks he knows more.
I want to go to that reality.
Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):
But what’s going on now is a little difficult to fathom. Basically treating it like flu, even though it’s not flu. Claiming we’ll just have to live with it and a whole load of people will just have to die, because, you know, Costa’s been low on profits for a while. Which is obviously worse.
Well, ok, but better to try that when we have more of us vaccinated yes? Because you know, this is a virus that mutates as it spreads. So just letting it go nuts on a partially vaccinated population means a good chance of more variants that the vaccines are not effective against that are more deadly to more people and are more transmissible. It’s already happening; hello delta variant. Then there’s the mounting evidence that surviving it isn’t just a case of ‘that’s it, well done, off you go’; it affects the brain and the body in ways that won’t be clear for a long time, not forgetting long covid, which is present in all age groups, children included. No other country in the world is trying this experiment of just giving up and letting the population just get infected and see what happens, and it seems to be baffling the international community (I admit I laughed when CNN compared our PM to Lord Farquaad). It is entirely unsurprising that the new health secretary is a mega fan of Ayn Rand, and I don’t see why we should be happy for them to take this risk with the lives of people they are entrusted to safeguard. Of course, they’ve left us with little alternative other than to forever go on the lock-down/reopen/lock-down/reopen carousel. Might it just have been a bit better to have held on until the vaccine roll out was complete, or near as dammit? It’s weird how anti-lockdown folk tend to also be anti-vaccine folk. So what, your preferred option is for as many people to die as possible? Why?
Being sick of experts unfortunately doesn’t stop them usually being right. Ignoring expertise has led to the most bonkers strategy to deal with the virus; to leave the EU in the most nonsensical manner imaginable and I’ve no doubt that scientific expertise will continue to be ignored regarding climate change.
Like some kind of Sunnydale-on-Sea (it genuinely does look like a hellmouth), we’ve actually managed to literally set the ocean on fire, and we’ve allowed a small town in Canada to literally burn down to the ground (note the ridiculous journalistic standards on that article that still make no mention whatsoever linking the temperatures and wildfires with climate change – the media are fully complicit in this being as bad as it is), but we still won’t move away from our dependence on fossil fuels with the urgency that was required decades ago. The response to this, and the growing protest movement from Extinction Rebellion? Change the law so the right to protest is rendered powerless and, according to the recently-passed bill, noisy protests can carry a 10 year jail term. So you can now be jailed for longer for, say, pulling down the statue of a slave trader than for rape. Well, they shouldn’t have inconvenienced people trying to grab a Costa should they? (Granted, the change in the law is likely also in response to Black Lives Matter in addition to Extinction Rebellion, but you know what? Black lives do matter, and they are still largely treated as though they don’t, or at least that they matter less, and until that changes and there is some kind of proper social justice, there are going to be those protesting about it.) Those in power call themselves libertarians? When they want to jail you for a decade for disagreeing with the endless corruption and incompetence that is leading to the actual end of our civilisation as we know it and the death and forced migration of billions of people (not as far away into the future as you would like to think)? I don’t think that word ‘libertarian’ means what they think it means.
Somewhere in the multiverse there is a reality where Murdoch, Koch, Rothmere et al don’t have the kind of influence they have here and we don’t have such a significant portion of the population that are so enamoured with populism, nationalism and jingoism, or so happy to get apoplectic about whatever culture war nonsense is used to distract them that they are happy, to borrow from Christopher Nolan, to watch the world burn so long as they can be mean about a princess from another country with brown skin. A reality where the statement given by an expert that has spent their entire life studying a subject isn’t given the same weight as some fool that’s read something online and now thinks he knows more.
I want to go to that reality.
Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):
Dirty Pretty Things: Bloodthirsty Bastards: “Bloodthirsty bastards making plans for no one/but themselves.”
Wednesday, June 9, 2021
Ugh.
Getting fed up of it now. Acting illegally. Bigging up a deal to increase corporation tax while at the same time trying to sort a loophole for your mates in the city. Mates that are still funding the destruction of us all. An opposition that appears to do literally nothing to oppose. And yet, what gets focused on? Vilifying black footballers that would like it if people stopped showering them with racist abuse. Vilifying a group of students that didn’t want a picture of the queen up. I mean, I had a picture of a queen up when I was at Uni, but it was the queen known as Buffy Summers, not Liz Windsor. More non-news. More culture war bullshit to distract from the endless corruption.
And people continue to lap it up.
As I said: ugh.
And people continue to lap it up.
As I said: ugh.
Thursday, April 29, 2021
When fandoms turn ugly.
Remember Game of Thrones? You probably watched it, right? You probably thought it was pretty good, too. You might not have liked the final season much (I have some things to say on this point in a minute which you might not like). You might even have read the books and liked them as well. But what you’ve probably not done is decided Game of Thrones is your hill to die on and that anything else in popular culture just doesn’t compare.
I’ve been unfortunate enough to be directly exposed to people that have, like a mad inbred Targaryen, simply gone off at the deep end. And no, it doesn’t just happen with Games of Thrones obviously. Star Wars is another high-profile fandom that is generally unpleasant. But the interactions I observed were with Game of Thrones ‘fans’. More particularly, mega fans of specifically the Mother of Dragons herself.
It was a bit of friendly competition in the shape of Twitter polls. Characters across popular culture with a focus on science fiction and fantasy pitted against each other to see who is the favourite. It was pointless and silly, but people I happen to follow were voting for their favourite characters, so it kept popping up in my timeline. And you wouldn’t believe the obsession some people have with a made up character winning a random Twitter poll. And the utter vitriol they would spit at the character they were up against, and that character’s fans.
The worst of all of these, for want of a better phrase, ridiculous fools, were the ones going to bat for Dany T. Not least because they were utterly misunderstanding her character as they declared her best because she be freeing slaves everywhere (remember though, no actual slaves were freed, because it's all made up). One competitor was Dana Scully, who is, quite frankly a million times better as a character, and a character that has in fact had a real-world impact – the popularity of The X-Files led to a significant increase in the number of women choosing career paths in STEM and medical sciences (called ‘The Scully Effect’). It’s one of the best things about art, this ability it has to change the course of a life for the better, and this little 5 minute video of women, including the incomparable Gillian Anderson, discussing it is a lovely thing.
Anyway, I’m not here to wax lyrical about Gillian Anderson and The X-Files (although, frankly I could for hours), I’m here to tell you about my exposure to an unpleasant fandom. Dany won that poll, beating out the OG himself, Gandalf the Grey in the final. There were calls of foul play, accusations of votes being bought (I really hope that wasn’t the case, because my already non-existent respect for these idiots would reach hitherto unknown levels of non-existence, if such a thing were possible, if they actually paid for votes. Anti-existence?). It’s one thing to be a nerd, or to geek out over some piece of media you’re obsessed over (for example, I’m currently in the throws of a fairly hardcore addiction to Babymetal), but it’s quite another to spit abuse at anyone that leans towards a different one. Especially when, in the case of the Daenerys-obsessives, the reasons you claim to love your character only shows everyone else you don’t actually understand her at all.
So. To the controversial hot take (and yes, while the following may not look like it, I am aware that it is not real, and I basically start to sound like those obsessives I was moaning about earlier, just without the hatred). Game of Thrones had a much-maligned final season. A good deal of the reason for this is Dany’s apparent switch from saviour of Westeros and slave-freeing badass and the one many viewers were rooting for, to mad innocent-murdering mega villain. But, the thing is, that didn’t come out of nowhere. There are clues throughout, not least of which is the fact that the Targaryens had been inbreeding for generations and pretty much every Targaryen’s default setting was either noble strength or deranged psychopathy, and no way to tell which it was going to be until your brother was being cooked alive in King’s Landing while the king looks on, laughing (unlucky Ned).
Starting from a position not of ruling, but of powerlessness, Dany’s Targaryen-ness took a while longer to manifest than usual, and let’s be honest, even without that kind of ancestry, the things she goes through would be enough to make a regular person want to burn down the whole world. Throughout her slave-freeing journey to queen, she demonstrates more than once that she doesn’t know the difference between justice and vengeance (I think a lot of people in the real world have this problem, which might be part of the reason why so many people loved the inbred psycho queen), and the development from inexperienced little sister to basically melting anyone she took a dislike to started back in season one – “The next time you lay a hand on me will be the last time you have hands.” A great line, and her brother was a prize twonk, but even then, more interested in vengeance than justice. Locking Xaro Xhoan Daxos in his own vault, along with her own handmaid. Punishing the slavers by doing to them what they did to others. None of this is justice. All of this is cruel and unusual punishment to enact vengeance. Feeling they deserved it (as most fans surely do) is irrelevant. There’s not much difference between what Dany was doing to her enemies all along and what Aerys the Mad King (Dany’s dad) did to poor Ned Stark’s brother. It’s just we considered Dany’s enemies proper villains until she got to King’s Landing. The end of Dany’s arc should not be a surprise if you’ve been paying attention.
Of course the die-hard fans of Dany argue the final season isn’t canon, that their queen is still the slave-freeing paragon of virtue they want her to be. Well, ok then, let’s consider the books. First off, Game of Thrones declined in quality from about season 5 (about the time it left the books behind), but the Dorne subplot is by far the worst part of any of it, including the final season. The problem is, the seeds for Dany’s final form have been sowed more definitively in the books so far published than they were in the show.
I really think GRRM has a problem on his hands with his final two books. He has stated on record that the show differs from the ending he has in mind for Dany (although it was apparently confirmed that Bran will end up on the throne). The cynic in me is picturing him seeing the reaction to the show and now desperately rewriting the next book to reframe Dany’s story, and not really knowing where to go, because the groundwork was more or less done for it. GRRM created this whole thing though, so I am taking his word on it and telling the cynic in me to shut up. But he's insistent.
When pushed, one of the Daenerys die-hards admitted that although they had been arguing that the books were not setting her up this way, they had only seen the show and read Dany’s chapters in the books and nothing else. So strong was the love for Dany T that they couldn’t even bring themselves to read the other chapters, which of course means they miss most of the story. Yet here they were, mouthing off like they are the expert and insulting anyone daring to question the assumptions they had made based on their incomplete picture. The mind truly boggles.
I could be wrong of course. A Song of Ice and Fire is infamous for taking the well-worn tropes of fantasy and gleefully ripping them to pieces. That’s kind of the whole point of it. Killing off your hero and main protagonist in book one (RIP Ned). Taking Dany’s baby, and the whole prophesised hero trope – ‘the stallion that mounts the world’ – except nope. He’s dead. No prophecy for you. So pretending I know what’s going to happen in the final two books is just silly. Anything could happen. Except, it looks like Bran will end up being king. Which, while also getting a fair bit of flack, is pretty much in keeping with the MO of the series. Who else could it really have been, when looking at how the show ended? Jon Snow? Based on his performance since he was brought back (being basically useless and losing pretty much every fight he’s been in and having to be rescued every single time), he’d be rubbish. Most useful thing he did was finish off Dany. Speaking of, don’t want her on the throne. She is, to put it mildly, an insane psychopath by the end. Tyrion? Yes he’s smart, but he’s made so many bad decisions, I actually think he’d be crap. Most useful thing he did was convince Jon to off queen T (shame his mate Varys and half of King’s Landing had to be cooked alive before he noticed what a literal hot mess she was). Convincing everyone to accept Bran was the last mistake we saw him make.
Because you see, Bran being king means the bad guys (or rather, the enemies of humankind - whether or not that makes them the bad guys largely depends on how you view the world) won. The children of the forest, the ones that first created the white walkers. They’ve installed their puppet, Bran, on the throne. Humankind’s oldest enemies, persecuted almost to extinction, now have the power to do untold damage to their adversaries. Which, I can’t help thinking, is yet another fantasy trope – that the people with inherent goodness and honour win the day in the end – that this series has spent its time demolishing again and again.
I’ve been unfortunate enough to be directly exposed to people that have, like a mad inbred Targaryen, simply gone off at the deep end. And no, it doesn’t just happen with Games of Thrones obviously. Star Wars is another high-profile fandom that is generally unpleasant. But the interactions I observed were with Game of Thrones ‘fans’. More particularly, mega fans of specifically the Mother of Dragons herself.
It was a bit of friendly competition in the shape of Twitter polls. Characters across popular culture with a focus on science fiction and fantasy pitted against each other to see who is the favourite. It was pointless and silly, but people I happen to follow were voting for their favourite characters, so it kept popping up in my timeline. And you wouldn’t believe the obsession some people have with a made up character winning a random Twitter poll. And the utter vitriol they would spit at the character they were up against, and that character’s fans.
The worst of all of these, for want of a better phrase, ridiculous fools, were the ones going to bat for Dany T. Not least because they were utterly misunderstanding her character as they declared her best because she be freeing slaves everywhere (remember though, no actual slaves were freed, because it's all made up). One competitor was Dana Scully, who is, quite frankly a million times better as a character, and a character that has in fact had a real-world impact – the popularity of The X-Files led to a significant increase in the number of women choosing career paths in STEM and medical sciences (called ‘The Scully Effect’). It’s one of the best things about art, this ability it has to change the course of a life for the better, and this little 5 minute video of women, including the incomparable Gillian Anderson, discussing it is a lovely thing.
Anyway, I’m not here to wax lyrical about Gillian Anderson and The X-Files (although, frankly I could for hours), I’m here to tell you about my exposure to an unpleasant fandom. Dany won that poll, beating out the OG himself, Gandalf the Grey in the final. There were calls of foul play, accusations of votes being bought (I really hope that wasn’t the case, because my already non-existent respect for these idiots would reach hitherto unknown levels of non-existence, if such a thing were possible, if they actually paid for votes. Anti-existence?). It’s one thing to be a nerd, or to geek out over some piece of media you’re obsessed over (for example, I’m currently in the throws of a fairly hardcore addiction to Babymetal), but it’s quite another to spit abuse at anyone that leans towards a different one. Especially when, in the case of the Daenerys-obsessives, the reasons you claim to love your character only shows everyone else you don’t actually understand her at all.
So. To the controversial hot take (and yes, while the following may not look like it, I am aware that it is not real, and I basically start to sound like those obsessives I was moaning about earlier, just without the hatred). Game of Thrones had a much-maligned final season. A good deal of the reason for this is Dany’s apparent switch from saviour of Westeros and slave-freeing badass and the one many viewers were rooting for, to mad innocent-murdering mega villain. But, the thing is, that didn’t come out of nowhere. There are clues throughout, not least of which is the fact that the Targaryens had been inbreeding for generations and pretty much every Targaryen’s default setting was either noble strength or deranged psychopathy, and no way to tell which it was going to be until your brother was being cooked alive in King’s Landing while the king looks on, laughing (unlucky Ned).
Starting from a position not of ruling, but of powerlessness, Dany’s Targaryen-ness took a while longer to manifest than usual, and let’s be honest, even without that kind of ancestry, the things she goes through would be enough to make a regular person want to burn down the whole world. Throughout her slave-freeing journey to queen, she demonstrates more than once that she doesn’t know the difference between justice and vengeance (I think a lot of people in the real world have this problem, which might be part of the reason why so many people loved the inbred psycho queen), and the development from inexperienced little sister to basically melting anyone she took a dislike to started back in season one – “The next time you lay a hand on me will be the last time you have hands.” A great line, and her brother was a prize twonk, but even then, more interested in vengeance than justice. Locking Xaro Xhoan Daxos in his own vault, along with her own handmaid. Punishing the slavers by doing to them what they did to others. None of this is justice. All of this is cruel and unusual punishment to enact vengeance. Feeling they deserved it (as most fans surely do) is irrelevant. There’s not much difference between what Dany was doing to her enemies all along and what Aerys the Mad King (Dany’s dad) did to poor Ned Stark’s brother. It’s just we considered Dany’s enemies proper villains until she got to King’s Landing. The end of Dany’s arc should not be a surprise if you’ve been paying attention.
Of course the die-hard fans of Dany argue the final season isn’t canon, that their queen is still the slave-freeing paragon of virtue they want her to be. Well, ok then, let’s consider the books. First off, Game of Thrones declined in quality from about season 5 (about the time it left the books behind), but the Dorne subplot is by far the worst part of any of it, including the final season. The problem is, the seeds for Dany’s final form have been sowed more definitively in the books so far published than they were in the show.
I really think GRRM has a problem on his hands with his final two books. He has stated on record that the show differs from the ending he has in mind for Dany (although it was apparently confirmed that Bran will end up on the throne). The cynic in me is picturing him seeing the reaction to the show and now desperately rewriting the next book to reframe Dany’s story, and not really knowing where to go, because the groundwork was more or less done for it. GRRM created this whole thing though, so I am taking his word on it and telling the cynic in me to shut up. But he's insistent.
When pushed, one of the Daenerys die-hards admitted that although they had been arguing that the books were not setting her up this way, they had only seen the show and read Dany’s chapters in the books and nothing else. So strong was the love for Dany T that they couldn’t even bring themselves to read the other chapters, which of course means they miss most of the story. Yet here they were, mouthing off like they are the expert and insulting anyone daring to question the assumptions they had made based on their incomplete picture. The mind truly boggles.
I could be wrong of course. A Song of Ice and Fire is infamous for taking the well-worn tropes of fantasy and gleefully ripping them to pieces. That’s kind of the whole point of it. Killing off your hero and main protagonist in book one (RIP Ned). Taking Dany’s baby, and the whole prophesised hero trope – ‘the stallion that mounts the world’ – except nope. He’s dead. No prophecy for you. So pretending I know what’s going to happen in the final two books is just silly. Anything could happen. Except, it looks like Bran will end up being king. Which, while also getting a fair bit of flack, is pretty much in keeping with the MO of the series. Who else could it really have been, when looking at how the show ended? Jon Snow? Based on his performance since he was brought back (being basically useless and losing pretty much every fight he’s been in and having to be rescued every single time), he’d be rubbish. Most useful thing he did was finish off Dany. Speaking of, don’t want her on the throne. She is, to put it mildly, an insane psychopath by the end. Tyrion? Yes he’s smart, but he’s made so many bad decisions, I actually think he’d be crap. Most useful thing he did was convince Jon to off queen T (shame his mate Varys and half of King’s Landing had to be cooked alive before he noticed what a literal hot mess she was). Convincing everyone to accept Bran was the last mistake we saw him make.
Because you see, Bran being king means the bad guys (or rather, the enemies of humankind - whether or not that makes them the bad guys largely depends on how you view the world) won. The children of the forest, the ones that first created the white walkers. They’ve installed their puppet, Bran, on the throne. Humankind’s oldest enemies, persecuted almost to extinction, now have the power to do untold damage to their adversaries. Which, I can’t help thinking, is yet another fantasy trope – that the people with inherent goodness and honour win the day in the end – that this series has spent its time demolishing again and again.
I doubt the book series will be finished at this point (although I really hope I'm wrong on that point, because even though much of this post reads like a criticism, A Song of Ice and Fire really is a phenomenal series of books), so I’ll probably never find out what the true canon is, but you never know.
Monday, March 15, 2021
Deliberately missing the point.
I almost didn’t write this because really, who needs to hear from yet another average white man? But often writing about things helps me examine my perspective and organise my thoughts a little better. So here I am.
Since the rape and murder of Sarah Everard in London, women have been sharing experiences over social media of the many many times they’ve been made to feel unsafe or endured some form of harassment. Sharing that fear of never knowing if the men making remarks to them are going to stop at remarks, or go further, or as in Sarah Everard’s case, ensure they don’t make it home alive.
It’s distressing to hear and read of so many accounts of this. But then men started to shout up. ‘Not all men’ they say. Frankly, that’s about as useful as ‘all lives matter’, and as with that ridiculous response to Black Lives Matter, it is deliberately missing the point. No, not all men are rapists and murderers. That does go without saying. But can every man honestly say that he’s never with the things he’s said to a woman, or by the way he’s stood too close to a woman, or stared for a little too long, that he’s never made a woman feel uncomfortable? Or scared, unsure if this time will be merely another invasion of personal space to endure, or will end up being something more final? Or pulled up one of his friends when he sees them do it?
I’d like to think not, but when I was younger I wasn’t so aware of the problem as I am now, so I don’t think I could say for sure. So, maybe in some ways it is all men? There were also comments made about how duh, women shouldn’t go out alone after dark, obviously it’s not safe, that’s just common sense. Why is it? Why should women be prevented from being outside after dark, when the danger comes from men? Why not keep men in after dark in that case?
I’m quite pleased I’m older now so don’t really find myself in situations where this could happen, but I do recall an incident from a night out a few years ago now. I’d had a really good night out with a few friends who were part of a wider group, and during the night we’d met up with and started chatting with another group of women. One of the women was plastered (if I recall one of her friends had said she’d not long gone through a bad break up). One of the men from my extended group had been with her for much of the night. Near the end of the night when some of her friends had tried to separate them, he hadn’t taken kindly to that, and I believe he had hit one of them.
Outside they were trying to bundle her into a cab to get her away from him, but he was trying to follow her. As the closest male witness to it all I was asked to intervene. I didn’t know what to say, so instead of challenging him directly I simply stood in front of him allowing her friends to get her and themselves away and hoped he didn’t get more violent. He didn’t and after a few minutes after they’d left, he’d wondered off to I don’t know where.
The thing is, I’m an abject coward and try my best to avoid confrontations, so putting myself in front of this man trying to force his way into a cab genuinely terrified me. But there’s the rub. As a man, I don’t have to feel that fear every time I’m out after dark. If I did, if I had to spend my life on high alert like that, I think I’d be very angry indeed. I think it wouldn’t be unreasonable to demand change. Or a moment to stand in solidarity with another woman who lost her life just because of a man acting on his basest instincts. And if that vigil was interrupted by another group of violent men, I would want nothing less than to burn the whole system that keeps me in this unending cycle to ashes.
Since the rape and murder of Sarah Everard in London, women have been sharing experiences over social media of the many many times they’ve been made to feel unsafe or endured some form of harassment. Sharing that fear of never knowing if the men making remarks to them are going to stop at remarks, or go further, or as in Sarah Everard’s case, ensure they don’t make it home alive.
It’s distressing to hear and read of so many accounts of this. But then men started to shout up. ‘Not all men’ they say. Frankly, that’s about as useful as ‘all lives matter’, and as with that ridiculous response to Black Lives Matter, it is deliberately missing the point. No, not all men are rapists and murderers. That does go without saying. But can every man honestly say that he’s never with the things he’s said to a woman, or by the way he’s stood too close to a woman, or stared for a little too long, that he’s never made a woman feel uncomfortable? Or scared, unsure if this time will be merely another invasion of personal space to endure, or will end up being something more final? Or pulled up one of his friends when he sees them do it?
I’d like to think not, but when I was younger I wasn’t so aware of the problem as I am now, so I don’t think I could say for sure. So, maybe in some ways it is all men? There were also comments made about how duh, women shouldn’t go out alone after dark, obviously it’s not safe, that’s just common sense. Why is it? Why should women be prevented from being outside after dark, when the danger comes from men? Why not keep men in after dark in that case?
I’m quite pleased I’m older now so don’t really find myself in situations where this could happen, but I do recall an incident from a night out a few years ago now. I’d had a really good night out with a few friends who were part of a wider group, and during the night we’d met up with and started chatting with another group of women. One of the women was plastered (if I recall one of her friends had said she’d not long gone through a bad break up). One of the men from my extended group had been with her for much of the night. Near the end of the night when some of her friends had tried to separate them, he hadn’t taken kindly to that, and I believe he had hit one of them.
Outside they were trying to bundle her into a cab to get her away from him, but he was trying to follow her. As the closest male witness to it all I was asked to intervene. I didn’t know what to say, so instead of challenging him directly I simply stood in front of him allowing her friends to get her and themselves away and hoped he didn’t get more violent. He didn’t and after a few minutes after they’d left, he’d wondered off to I don’t know where.
The thing is, I’m an abject coward and try my best to avoid confrontations, so putting myself in front of this man trying to force his way into a cab genuinely terrified me. But there’s the rub. As a man, I don’t have to feel that fear every time I’m out after dark. If I did, if I had to spend my life on high alert like that, I think I’d be very angry indeed. I think it wouldn’t be unreasonable to demand change. Or a moment to stand in solidarity with another woman who lost her life just because of a man acting on his basest instincts. And if that vigil was interrupted by another group of violent men, I would want nothing less than to burn the whole system that keeps me in this unending cycle to ashes.
Men are useless and women should inherit the earth.
Wednesday, March 3, 2021
Good…and bad.
I feel like some days I might be two different people in one ragged overweight shell. I feel like some days I’ve been trying to hold two realities in my head at once; both equally true, yet both very different. The personal and the external.
My life is going ok generally. Yes, there is an awful lot of extra stress at the moment from being stuck at home a lot. There is boredom from not being able to see friends and colleagues socially, or to take my kids to the local swimming pool or to the cinema or even to my local for an overpriced mediocre meal. But the rest of it’s going well.
Staying at home isn’t so bad because I’ve managed (with help – still impossible to do without help) to buy a house, and it’s a house that we love. I still have a job when so many others are struggling. I live with my family. You know, I’m not king of the world or a millionaire, but generally things are going well.
As long as I don’t widen that viewpoint, things are fine. If I look up beyond my own personal circumstances things get bleaker. Corruption and dishonesty in plain view from those tasked with governing us both at home and overseas, with a media that instead of holding them to account, spends its time trying to distract us with racist hit-pieces on members of the royal family they don’t like, a collective lack of effort to mitigate the numerous and linked challenges facing us in the near future, decisions made to increase, rather than reduce, the grave imbalance between the ultra-rich and the destitute, still refusing to pay staff on the front lines of this fight against the pandemic what they’re worth, paying them instead with claps.
The existential nature of the fear and the threat of climate change-caused ecological breakdown and how it will affect every part of our lives with increasing extremity, coupled with the fact that those tasked with preparing society to face it are chained to the will of those still profiting from fuelling the breakdown and the way most of us face the situation with apathy.
All of that causes a weird feeling in me some days. The peace I feel at home from the generally positive place I’m in personally feels unearned and somehow disrespectful when the wider view of the world imposes itself on me. Some days I think the cognitive dissonance is enough to make me crumble to dust and just stop doing anything.
It's a strange thing.
Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):
My life is going ok generally. Yes, there is an awful lot of extra stress at the moment from being stuck at home a lot. There is boredom from not being able to see friends and colleagues socially, or to take my kids to the local swimming pool or to the cinema or even to my local for an overpriced mediocre meal. But the rest of it’s going well.
Staying at home isn’t so bad because I’ve managed (with help – still impossible to do without help) to buy a house, and it’s a house that we love. I still have a job when so many others are struggling. I live with my family. You know, I’m not king of the world or a millionaire, but generally things are going well.
As long as I don’t widen that viewpoint, things are fine. If I look up beyond my own personal circumstances things get bleaker. Corruption and dishonesty in plain view from those tasked with governing us both at home and overseas, with a media that instead of holding them to account, spends its time trying to distract us with racist hit-pieces on members of the royal family they don’t like, a collective lack of effort to mitigate the numerous and linked challenges facing us in the near future, decisions made to increase, rather than reduce, the grave imbalance between the ultra-rich and the destitute, still refusing to pay staff on the front lines of this fight against the pandemic what they’re worth, paying them instead with claps.
The existential nature of the fear and the threat of climate change-caused ecological breakdown and how it will affect every part of our lives with increasing extremity, coupled with the fact that those tasked with preparing society to face it are chained to the will of those still profiting from fuelling the breakdown and the way most of us face the situation with apathy.
All of that causes a weird feeling in me some days. The peace I feel at home from the generally positive place I’m in personally feels unearned and somehow disrespectful when the wider view of the world imposes itself on me. Some days I think the cognitive dissonance is enough to make me crumble to dust and just stop doing anything.
It's a strange thing.
Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):
The Doors: Strange Days: “Strange days have found us, strange days have tracked us down. They’re going to destroy our casual joys.”
Thursday, January 28, 2021
Happy New Year?
2020 was undoubtedly a difficult one. Understandably there is a lot of sentiment about this year being better. And in some ways, I’m sure it will be. There are multiple vaccines being distributed (although we still have the worst death rate in the entire world) and the Orange Menace is gone, although there is no sign of the conditions that made far right populists able to attain power so easily both over there and over here going anywhere anytime soon. Moaning about news outlets filtering everything through an ideological filter is pretty much the sum total of what I do on here, but it’s still the reason why nobody can see eye to eye – nobody knows what the actual truth is, just what the owners of the news media they consume want them to think the truth is.
Even when a concerted effort is made to appear balanced, the curse of false equivalency rears its head. Take the BBC, insisting on hearing ‘both sides’ on every issue from climate change to COVID, even when there isn’t really a ‘both sides’ to it at all – just what is true and what is not. It’s damaged the corporation’s credibility to the point where those on the left see it as little more than a state-sponsored Tory mouthpiece and those on the other side of the political divide rant about it being biased against them, leaving basically everyone to consider the news and political coverage not worth paying attention to. And they’d be absolutely right. This piece by the Byline Times sums it up better than I can.
The thing is, I don’t think 2020 being largely shite is a freak occurrence. I think it’s a symptom. I think we’ve been warned for decades that the way we live, the way we consume, will rob the world of its ability to support us, and I think that’s what’s happening. I think the consistent warming of the planet (we’re up about 1.2 degrees on average and 1.5 is where things start getting cataclysmic) is beginning to break down the weather and ecological systems we rely on. I think the flooding and the fires and the other indicators of climate change will continue to get worse. I think there might be other, more deadly pandemics on the way. I think we’re at the point where our species’ consistent excess is starting to come back around and demand we start reaping all the sewing we’ve been doing.
That’s not to say I think we should all give up. Things are turning around, albeit too slowly. We might yet be able to secure some kind of future that isn’t apocalyptic, but it’s going to be touch and go for a few decades.
Wish us luck.
Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):
The thing is, I don’t think 2020 being largely shite is a freak occurrence. I think it’s a symptom. I think we’ve been warned for decades that the way we live, the way we consume, will rob the world of its ability to support us, and I think that’s what’s happening. I think the consistent warming of the planet (we’re up about 1.2 degrees on average and 1.5 is where things start getting cataclysmic) is beginning to break down the weather and ecological systems we rely on. I think the flooding and the fires and the other indicators of climate change will continue to get worse. I think there might be other, more deadly pandemics on the way. I think we’re at the point where our species’ consistent excess is starting to come back around and demand we start reaping all the sewing we’ve been doing.
That’s not to say I think we should all give up. Things are turning around, albeit too slowly. We might yet be able to secure some kind of future that isn’t apocalyptic, but it’s going to be touch and go for a few decades.
Wish us luck.
Occasional feature: Ending with a song loosely related to the post (or more like a lyric I can take out of context and loosely relate to the post):
Queens of the Stone Age: …Like Clockwork: “Most of what you see my dear, is worth letting go, because not everything that goes around comes back around you know. One thing that is clear: It’s all downhill from here.”
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