Crazy Busy Bih

Even though they no longer are causing harm to others and are able to actually undo some of their previous harm by living, some folks reacted as though this ending was somehow morally suspect. Morally bankrupt, even.

And I think it might be because so many of us were raised on a very specific kind of kids media trope:

They all fall to their deaths.

Disney loves chucking their bad guys off cliffs. And it makes sense- in a moral framework where villains *must* be punished (regardless of whether their death will actually prevent further harm or not), but killing of any kind is morally bad for the hero, the narrative must find a way to kill the villain without the protagonists doing a murder.

It's a moral assumption that a person can *deserve* to die, that it is cosmically just for them to die, that them dying is evidence that the story itself is morally good and correct. Scar *deserves* to die, but it would be bad for Simba to kill him. So....cliff.

Steven Universe, whatever else it's faults, took at step back and said "but if killing people is bad, then people dying is bad", and instead of dropping White Diamond off a cliff, asked "what would actual *restorative*, not punitive, justice look like? What would actual reparations mean here? If the goal is to heal, not just to punish, how do we handle those who have done harm?" And then did that.

Which I think is interesting, and that there was pushback against it is interesting.

I'd also like to point out that the idea that you can prevent a wholesale genocide by like, killing the RIGHT individual, is a rather...simplistic understanding of what causes genocide.

Frollo, to use him as the example, is a priest (in the book), and a judge (in the Disney movie.) He's not just a bad guy. He's an extention of the Catholic Church/The State (depending on which version you want to lean on here.) His power to do harm comes from his position within those institutions and the power of those institutions themselves. The persecution of the Roma people within France isn't because there was a bad guy, but because of those systems of power being used to kill the people that the church and the government wanted dead. Frollo getting dropped off a building wouldn't stop the persecution of the Roma in any world that isn't, maybe, a Disney film.

In the real world, it's very easy to hold up Hitler as the boogeyman. But if Hitler had died, but the war machine of Third Reich Germany hadn't lost the Battle of Berlin/the War as a whole, the Holocaust wouldn't have magically stopped just because 1 guy died.

Look. I'm not saying that there's never been a situation in the world where killing 1 guy wasn't the objectively best option in a high stakes, immediately dangerous situation. The world is full of Trolley problems and self defense situations and nuance and context.

But this post is about Restorative vs Punitive Justice *systems*, and about how many people, in general, start and end their analysis of Justice with "did the bad guy get killed?"

I would even argue that this mentality, where as long as you are sure in your heart that it will SAVE LIVES, killing people is just and good and shouldn't be questioned because some people are just bad- that mentality? Forms the core of Police killings in our culture. Justifies shooting first and asking questions never. Because once you decide that someone has done harm, they need to die for there to be Justice?

Note: Sleeves or a head appearing is okay IN CERTAIN SITUATIONS. Like working in a garden and rolling up your sleeves OR going to the hair salon OR checking up in a hospital. In other Mazhab or fiqh, it's much more lenient and it's okay to show ankles or neck. (depends on country or Mazhab)

Note: Camel Hump hijab in certain tafsir could mean a haughty attitude rather than the camel hump shaped hijab, but there are also others that take it literally too, so it depends on the person.

Image one:

a screenshot of Tumblr tags that read

#me core #<- (arrow) mr krab at the chernobyl nuclear reactor

End image one

Image two:

A picture of an edited picture of Chernobyl nuclear power plant with Mr. Krabs overlayed on top with a speech bubble making it appear as if Mr Krabs is saying "me core!" In all caps.

End image 2

From “The Curse of Ibac” in Captain Marvel Adventures #8, March 1942. Henry Lynne Perkins (?) plot, John Broome (?) script.

Firstly, a reminder: This is not tiktok and we just say the words incest and pedophilia here.

Secondly, I don't know if I would call them 'interests' so much as fixations or even concerns. There are monstrous things that people think about, and I think writing is a place to engage with those monstrous things. It doesn't bother me that people engage with those things. I exist somewhere within the whump scale, and I would hope no one would think less of me just because sooner or later I like to rough a good character up a bit, you know? It's fun to torture characters, as a treat!

But, anyway, assuming this question isn't, "Do writers know they're gross when I think they are gross" which I'm going to take the kind road and assume it isn't, but is instead, "Do you think authors are aware of the things they constantly come back to?"

Sometimes. It can be jarring to read your own writing and realize that there are things you CLEARLY are preoccupied with. (mm, I like that word more than concerns). There are things you think about over and over, your run your mind over them and they keep working their way back in. I think this is true of most authors, when you read enough of them. Where you almost want to ask, "So...what's up with that?" or sometimes I read enough of someone's work that I have a PRETTY good idea what's up with that.

I've never read Robert Jordan and I don't intend to start (I think it would bore me this is not a moral stance) and I've really never read Rice's erotica. In erotica especially I think you have all the right in the world to get fucking weird about it! But so, when I was young I read the whole Vampire Chronicles series. I don't remember it perfectly, but there's plenty in it to reveal VERY plainly that Anne Rice has issues with God but deeply believes in God, and Anne Rice has a preoccupation with the idea of what should stay dead, and what it means to become. So, when i found out her daughter died at the age of six, before Rice wrote all of this, and she grew up very very Catholic' I said, 'yeah, that fucking checks out'.

Was Rice herself aware of how those things formed her writing? I think at a certain point probably yes. The character of Claudia is in every way too on the nose for her not to have SOME idea unless she was REAL REAL dense about her own inner workings. But, sometimes I know where something I write about comes from, that doesn't mean I'm interested in sharing it with the class. I would never ever fucking say, 'The reasons I seem to write so much of x as y is that z happened to me years ago' ahaha FUCK THAT NOISE. NYET. RIDE ON, COWBOY.

But I've known some people in fandom works who clearly have something going on and don't seem to realize it. Or they're very good at hiding it. Based on the people I'm talking about I would say it's more a lack of self-knowledge, and I don't even mean that unkindly. I have, in many ways, taken myself down to the studs and rebuilt it all, so I unfortunately am very aware of why I do and write the things I do most of the time. It's extremely annoying not to be able to blame something. I imagine it must be very freeing. But it ain't me, babe.

Anyway, a lot of words to say: Maybe! But that might not stop them from writing it, it might be a useful thing for them to engage with, and you can always just not read it.

Anon ostensibly wants to know: "Do authors realize that they're writing about things that some people might find disturbing, horrific, upsetting, repulsive, or simply just TMI?" (Yes, obviously they know. Authors are not stupid; that's usually a requirement of the job (not always. But usually).)

But what Anon is actually asking is, "Why don't authors stop themselves from doing a Bad Thing? Why doesn't anyone else stop them?" The assumption underlying that question is: "Surely if they realized that they were doing something disgusting, they would stop immediately." Even more covertly implied: "I think writing about certain things automatically taints you with moral degeneracy--that is, it marks you as a possible or potential criminal."

To that I say: My friend, writing is just thoughts copied onto paper, and thinking is not a crime. Only actual actions can be crimes. What does it matter what other people think about? Literally so what? Why do you want people to be stopped from thinking about those things ("did their editors ever gently ask them...")? Why do you care? Do you feel that an author should provide a list of justifications and excuses before it's permissible for them to write about something? Why? And who do you think should be in charge of that? The government???? YOU???????

To any person reading this post: If the above questions are personally upsetting to you, if you find yourself huffily thinking something like, "Well, I care because it could normalize--", NOPE, STOP RIGHT THERE. 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 This is a big red flag: You (much like the Anon) are exhibiting some early warning signs of Fascism, and that is not something to take lightly in the current political climate. There are some drugs you shouldn't experiment with even once, and fascism is one of them. Repeat as often as needed: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THOUGHTCRIME. WE DO NOT LIVE IN GEORGE ORWELL'S 1984.

But we already talk about thoughtcrimes now and then, don't we? I can't remember seeing someone talking about crimestop (also from Orwell's 1984):

In the Newspeak vocabulary, the word crimestop denotes the citizen's instinctive desire to rid himself of unwanted, incorrect thoughts (personal and political), the discovery of which, by the Thinkpol [Thought Police], would lead to detection and arrest, transport to and interrogation at Miniluv (Ministry of Love). The protagonist, Winston Smith, describes crimestop as a conscious process of self-imposed cognitive dissonance: The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. . . . He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions—'the Party says the Earth is flat', 'the Party says that ice is heavier than water'—and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. Moreover, from the perspective of Oceania's principal enemy of the state, in the history book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, Emmanuel Goldstein said that: Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

Read that twice, and then reread the Anon's question. Translate it through that lens: "Why," says the Anon, delicately disgusted, "are these authors not practicing better crimestop? I practice it all the time. Why aren't they?"

Great question, Anon. Why AREN'T they? Turn off your crimestop and give it some real thought.