I Might Have Trusted The Process Too Much This Time.

asleep

Current mood

what's up with that mr. little amirite?

I always forget about the term rose (as in, the shortening of romantic-sexual) and it's such a good term. Allorose is such a good term to make it clear that you're talking about only people who are both alloromantic and allosexual, and not talking about other tertiary ways of being allo, and all the rose labels, like grayrose and demirose, are so cool and convenient too. And their flags are so good! I love the blue-green. Anyway. Just a reminder that rose exists and it's a cool word and we should use it even more.

Gotta be honest my favorite Commander Fox fanfic trope is “I love committing treason! Do you want to meet all the troopers whose deaths I’ve faked?”

I tap the mic. “Most people don’t want to crawl down your chimney and steal your dog.”

the crowd murmurs uncertainly.

“If someone wants to steal your dog,” I continue, “there are easier ways to do that. They don’t have to crawl into a chimney.”

Murmuring intensifies. People stand in their seats and begin to boo.

“People disguising themselves as chimney sweepers and stealing dogs is not a rational fear,” I shout. “Literally anyone could steal your dog. Why make sweeping chimneys illegal?”

“I have a list of chimney sweeps who stole dogs from parks!” Someone yells, throwing a shoe.

“You seriously think no chimney sweepers could possibly ever steal from a home?” Another cries.

“Only a dog thief would even want to crawl into a chimney to begin with!” Says a third.

A single tear rolls down my cheek. They are all so fucking stupid

This is a metaphor

(Short, truncated, but hopefully not reductive) Russian history lesson!!!

A perspective that needed to be beat into the dirt when I first started playing Pathologic was that the Bachelor was a city dandy and dandies inherently imply conservatism, which is a British Victorian ideal that has been described like this: "the upper classes were expected to affirm their masculinity through sexual distance, abstinence and self-control," a kind of "cerebral, self-denying asceticism" (Ashish Nandy, The Intimate Enemy; btw). The image of a well-dressed, well-spoken and educated man is found in a lot of core western texts - like Pride and Prejudice, where Darcy is in an ideologically conservative space because he's a part of a protective wealthy class.

But, you know, be careful that bias doesn't drip into your interpretation of Daniil Dankovsky, because his political and social positions are wildly different. The Victorian upper and upper-middle class were historically borne from an accumulation of luxuries brought in through global dominance and colonialism, which drove that subsection of people to the far right. Also, because of this wealth and national expansion, people were moving to cities (to London) in droves. England shifted from a rural to urban-based country. "By 1851 over half the population lived in settlements of 2,500 or more, peaking at around 80 per cent by the 1890s," according to an article by R J Davenport, just to give you some numbers.

Okay, but Russia? "87 percent of the population was rural when revolution broke out in 1905, and 85 percent still rural when it erupted again in 1917" (Dorothy Atkinson, Stats on the Russian Land Commune). Of the small percentage are the intelligentsia, educated people who went to college, which was at first dominated by nobles and then by the turn of the century was overrun by "commoners" (like Dankovsky, who in a monarchical society mostly made of peasants is still beneath high, noble classes)

From these commoners came liberal radicals, and from some of these liberal radicals came futurists. This is what Dankovsky is (Futurism/Utopianism. You see).

(Okay, Russian futurists are different from Italian futurists and there were many different types of Russian futurism, but everything came from Marinetti)

This revolution was running parallel to other cultural revolutions inside Russia, inside cities, and parallel to the Bolsheviks. But post-revolution, Lenin condemned the intelligentsia as the chaff between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, in assistance to the bourgeoisie. So they are all summarily stomped asunder.

But this is where the Bachelor is! This is where he's coming from. And I think all modern Russian media that concerns itself with futurism or the culture surrounding 1917 is written with the inexorable knowledge that all of this Utopianism will be usurped by the USSR. Dankovsky may be doomed by the narrative but the narrative itself is doomed by history.

This is not in-depth at all, I'm sorry, but I hope it's serviceable.

“What if I write it and it’s bad-”

WHAT IF YOU WRITE IT AND ITS GOOD? WHAT IF YOU WRITE IT AND ITS EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANTED? WHAT THEN????

I see people fighting about who to ship Commander Fox with and so I propose: ALL of them.

Fox is dating Riyo AND Quinlan AND Bail AND Breha. All at the same time. Just one big massive polycule.