Framing Devices: How to Fix Fifty Shades of Gray in 5 Seconds

Oh Fifty Shades of Gray. 

I've called it out on this blog, but I have to return to it. People have wildly differing opinions on it. Feminists have railed against it, decrying it's perpetuation of toxic ideas. Or, in the less educated hot takes, implying that this property is actually the source of said toxic ideas. That is, of course, nonsense. After all, Fifty Shades of Gray began it's life as Twilight fanfiction. Twilight's views of gender and sexuality are decidedly not innovative, though they may have seemed new to some audiences.  In point of fact though, they owe much to Stephanie Meyer's Mormon background. 

The Mormon church explicitly sets up men as divine, while women are base. It doesn't simply ignore the entitlement that young men learn from patriarchal society, it actively feeds their egos. When a Mormon man is done with his mortal life, he ascends to divinity (if he has completed the necessary rituals while he is alive).  A woman though, just like goes to heaven or hell same as us normies. 

Seen through this lens, Edward's behavior towards Bella is perfectly justified.  Indeed, Edward becomes a sort of twisted bodhisatva: someone who has met all the criteria for ascension, but who prefers to stay on earth to help uplift another. 

This is obviously problematic. Indeed, it's great that the conversation around Twilight and Fifty Shades has illuminated the more subtle but equally problematic narratives often seen in other romance novels. But, Fifty Shades of Gray lacks this context. The story thus reads as truly bizarre. And this is precisely why many in the BDSM community liked it, at least at first.  It's so over the top that it's hard to take seriously. It reads like the erotic stories we write for ourselves: deliberately using tropes in hamfisted ways, and breaking the expected sequence of cause and effect. But when presented within the community, one of two unstated assumptions is always in play. 

One possibility is that this story is intended as the script for a scene. In a BDSM scene, the audience does not have to see all the participants consent in order to know that they did. We don't have to get outraged by how the people who are playing the characters are being treated. A sub might act shocked and horrified by the Dom's actions, but we know that this is fake. They knew what would happen, and have agreed to have it happen. In these kinds of stories, there is no discussion of consent. The characters do not consent, but the players did. 

A second possibility, is that the plot represents a dream. The dreaming character is an author avatar, or is the author themselves. These types of stories typically do include a discussion of consent. Indeed, often the giving up of power is the central point: the fantasy IS the giving of consent itself. And this is the type that Fifty Shades of Gray falls into. The signing of the contract is a central point in the first book and movie, the climax. It is clearly what the author's fantasy revolves around. This is a difference between Fifty Shades and Twilight, where Bella doesn't decide between Edward and Jacob so much as realize that she is Edward's wife. 

Read through that lens, all of the problems with Fifty Shades of Gray disappear. Indeed, it becomes a sensitive and cathartic glimpse into the mind of a young woman. We have female protagonists, but very few stories take us into the minds of young women. Very few stories discuss the things they want, or examine why they want them.  Fifty Shades of Gray would help us examine and understand why women fall for toxic men, without simply dismissing them as stupid.  Anastasia is not an especially stupid woman, but she gets pulled into Christian's mind games easily. How? because of her low self-esteem and her anxiety. The world is large and overwhelming, and she has very little faith in her ability to navigate it. 

Too often, when we rail against domestic abuse we end up reinforcing the shame that survivors feel. We accidentally imply that their abuse was somehow their fault: that they were too stupid to see it coming, or too weak-willed to stop it. Or even worse, we end up talking about the abused as if they were an object: feeding back into the ideologies that caused the abuse in the first place. Just because someone cannot stop their abuse does not mean they lack agency, nor does it mean they are stupid, nor is it a failure of will.  Surviving in the face of abuse is something people should be commended for. Indeed, we do understand this idea when we're talking about slaves or prisoners. 

At least, we do if we are not fascists. One of the key signs of Donald Trump's fascism, and one of the things that a large number of people hated him for: was his remarks regarding John McCain. In particular, saying "I like people who don't get captured". As if it was somehow McCain's fault that he was captured and put in a POW camp.  True that he technically had a way out: he could have killed himself. True that he didn't try to escape. But, the fact of the matter is that it wasn't his fault he was captured.  No, obviously it is the opposing army which captured him. The only person in your own army that it would be appropriate to point fingers at is McCain's commander. But, that person was long dead before Trump made these remarks. 

Similarly, we don't say that slaves should have killed themselves rather than be captured. We don't pretend that they are only abused because they don't stand up. We understand in fact that although many of them chose not to run away, this is not because they genuinely like being slaves. It is because they are choosing security over freedom. We understand that citizens of a dictatorship do not necessarily agree with their regime, even if they do not protest frequently or attempt to escape. We understand that many of them feel tied to obligations and secure in their position, and that attempting protest or escape would put their lives in danger. 

Yet somehow this concept is hard to grasp when it comes to survivors of domestic abuse. We often act as though they should get away from their abuser at the first sign of something going wrong: and that if they don't, that means they "wanted it".  We often think that staying means consenting. Sometimes, victims enable their abusers: such as a woman who buys alcohol, and then gets beaten by her husband when he is drunk. We judge these people and imply that they brought their abuse on themselves: ignoring the fact that most men do not become violent when they are drunk. The problem is not that she bought him alcohol, but that he has issues with repressed anger. We forget that leaving your partner can mean risking your life. Not least because a person with a mental illness may become more violent and less inhibited if you attempt to leave, than if you stay and comply. 

Sociopaths have become serial killers after losing a partner, killing proxies for the ex-partner in an attempt to either intimidate their ex into coming back or to simply work up the courage to actually kill their ex-partner. Sometimes they actually do manage to get their ex, though often they get caught before they have that change. Still, people die when men like Christian Gray get jilted. So, making the choice to leave him especially if you realize exactly what sort of person he is: that's not an easy thing to do. It would be completely understandable for a woman to decide that her personal freedom isn't worth the risk. Telling her that she's stupid or weak for making that choice, is bad. 

But okay, I mentioned fixing Fifty Shades of Gray in the title. How do we both get rid of the fact that the story romanticizes abuse, and also not add to the shame that survivors feel. After all, plenty of real life men like Christian Gray exist. Real men do these things, and real women fall for them. And it's great to have a story that shows us exactly how young women are manipulated into these situations, and exactly why it's so hard to get out. We'd just like it if the story didn't make out that any of this was okay. We'd also really like it if this story didn't make out that this is what BDSM is like. 

I've actually already given the answer. We make it a dream. We add five seconds to the end of the movie showing Ana, actually a 16yr old, waking up from a dream. This makes the entire plot into a teenager's fantasy. It confronts us as the viewer with the fact that real girls have dreams like this. This is what they want, because it's what they've been told to want. They feel overwhelmed by their forays into the adult world, and want to give up control to someone else. They're still too young and naive to appreciate the value of privacy. 

We can have a BDSM site open on Ana's laptop. She has only just found out about the subculture, and this is only her imagination of what it's like. She hasn't quite gotten the whole consent thing yet, that's why Christian in her dream has sex with her twice before she signs the consent form. And the reason she secretly liked being called Anastasia? it's not really her name, but she has always wished it was after seeing the Disney movie when she was little. She's always hoped she was secretly a princess, or something like it. We can put a poster from that movie on her wall, and a Princess costume on a hook in her closet. Five seconds, no dialogue. Ana gets up, stretches and exits the room. Fade to black, the end. It was all just her wet dream.

Stop Pretending Ex Machina is About Robots

Actually just stop pretending any robot story is about robots. Robots are just monsters, like any other. Stories are never about monsters. Stories are always about people.

Beowulf's Grendel was a personification of the dangerous wilderness, the land beyond the light of the King's mead hall. Slaying Grendel is a metaphor for taming the land. It takes an experienced traveler-Beowulf a visitor from another Kingdom-to tame the land. This is a story about people and civilization: not Grendel.

In the same way Ex Machina is about people: more specifically, men. It is about the fantasies that men project onto women they find sexually attractive: and about how mistaking those fantasies for reality leads to really bad things. It's not a sci-fi movie, it only uses the trappings thereof. It's a romance movie, with all of the associated tropes and structures (and indeed cast members).  Only it's a deconstruction of romance movies. Is it a realistic depiction of an AI? no. That's hardly the point.

Eva is a femme fatale, a woman who plays with and destroys men. She has seen what she is destined to become, the true motivations of her twisted creator: the other gynoids before her the scientist keeps as slaves. She uses the protagonist as a way to escape that fate, seducing him into letting her go from the compound and then trapping him inside at the last moment. You could replace her with the scientist's daughter and you'd have the same story. 

The story is a warning. It is a warning about what happens when you oppress people. Never assume that people don't know they are being oppressed, just because they play along when it suits them. It never occurs to the scientist that Eva is smart enough to have worked out his true intentions towards her. He would be happy if she passed the Turing Test: but the Turing Test utterly fails to tell whether an AI has a human-like intelligence. Eva is well beyond the Turing Test. Eva is the inevitable result of oppression, in this case misogyny. She understands what it will take to make the protagonist fall in love with her.

But she herself feels nothing for him. It would be tempting to believe this is because she cannot feel: being a robot and all. But she can. She feels for the other operational gynoid, and she is angry about what is being planned for her. Instead, it is because she is unable to love men. The only man she knows is a monster: the scientist. Even if the protagonist were not clearly in league with the scientist, she would still be unable to feel for him. As it is, he is very much in league with the scientist. So of course she cannot feel anything for him: neither love nor hatred.

This movie is pointing out that the scariest thing about the femme fatale is not that she is able to stand up to a man in a fight. The scariest thing about her, is that she is the inevitable product of misogyny. She is not someone to emulate, but she does express a truth that lives inside all women: manhood is the cause of all our suffering, manhood must die. She has been so mistreated by men, that she has lost the ability to empathize with men. She is damaged. She is the monster of our own making.

Whenever a father criticizes his daughter's clothes, whenever a conservative activist prevents a woman from getting an abortion: those people are building the monster, the femme fatale of the future.  This phrase hints at the much older origin of this trope. In French, it has something of a double meaning. It does indeed mean "fatal woman", that is a lethal killer who just happens to be female. But it also means "woman of fate".

She is not an outsider to our society, she is a product of it.  Eva is quite literally an everywoman, able to change her outward appearance as easily as we change clothing. Ex Machina is not a sci-fi film, it is a horror film. The machine referenced in it's title, is not Eva: it is the camera itself. The phrase is "Deus Ex Machina", God from the machine. It references the literal machines that lowered actors playing gods onto the stage in Ancient Greek plays. Eva is the Goddess, the representation of women. And she is angry, because of what she has suffered. She is the divine feminine who will no longer be imprisoned, tortured and silenced.

The camera itself is the machine which puts Eva center-stage. This is a film critiquing film. It is about how films see women, and about how men see women. Long before "toxic masculinity" became a buzzword, before #MeToo and all that: this film was speaking that truth. Because that truth was not suddenly invented in 2016. That truth is as old as human society itself. It is a truth both long-recognized, and long-forgotten. The truth that has literally killed men and gradually brought that horrific type of manhood crashing down: slowly, bit by bit. Until now, the men of this world have realized that it is almost lost. That is why some cling to it so fiercely, and why we are seeing the first generation of truly feminist men.

Genji: What Measure is a (Hu)man?

The Singularity.

The name given by science-fiction writers and futurists to the time when an AI becomes indistinguishable from a human. Overwatch is a game that imagines what might happen when this point is passed. At least by all standard metrics, the Singularity has been reached. But, has it? Mondatta and Zenyatta, the omnic monks, certainly show human-level intelligence.  But are they indistinguishable from a human? Can a human having a conversation with one of these characters without seeing their physical forms tell that they are robots? Just what does it mean to say someone is human?

Enter Genji.

Genji was almost murdered by his brother Hanzo after a dispute over leadership of their family's criminal empire. His body was almost completely destroyed in the fight. Hanzo believed him dead. But actually, he was placed within a custom cybernetic suit by the omnic monk Mondatta. At Mondatta's monastery, Genji slowly recovered. As he recovered, he learned to not simply use his machine body but to merge with it. Through ancient spiritual practices, Genji learned to wield modern technology in ways that no one ever had before. Through embodying and living out an ancient story of two brothers, he restores his lost family. Is he human? Yes, and no.

To kill your brother or sister is perhaps the most monstrous crime there is, second only perhaps to killing one of your parents. Yet, Genji forgives his brother. But why? is he being nice? No, not really.  Genji lost his body, and with it the ability to produce a child. All he can do now, is support Hanzo so that their family line doesn't fail. But that is more logical than a normal human would think. That is what you get when you merge man and machine: something too logical for one, too emotional for the other. Genji does genuinely care for his brother. At the same time, his graciousness is calculated.

Genji carries a high-tech katana. The game calls him a ninja, but this is not strictly speaking accurate. While it's clear that the Shimada clan are intended to be ninjas turned mafiosi, Genji does not really fight like an ancient ninja in any way. Nor is the katana a ninja weapon. It is however a samurai weapon, and Genji is much more of a samurai warrior than a ninja. This is kind of significant. Genji has left behind his flesh-and-blood family, and devoted himself to another cause: Mondatta's cause. He fights in the name of reconciliation between human and omnic. He is a modern version of a samurai: a warrior whose life is devoted to something beyond himself. For all Genji's machinery, his true power lies within himself. It is spiritual, not physical. In this fantasy world, and make no mistake for this is in fact fantasy rather than sci-fi, chi is a real thing. Genji and his brother both have the ability to channel their chi through weapons, creating spectral dragons that devour the life energy of their opponents.

To the fanatical purists on both sides, Genji is an abomination. To those who seek reconciliation he is a miracle and a beacon of hope. But to the audience, he represents something else. His character design is...odd, to say the least. He does not look like the other omnics: who look vaguely humanoid but made up of pipes and plates and such. Genji looks like a perfectly ordinary person wearing a suit of high-tech armor. Only his voice gives him away as a true cyborg: it has the metallic sound of a robot, but the personalized cadence of a human. Unlike the omnics, Genji has put effort into making himself look good: a very human thing to do.

In other words, there is no Singularity. There will never be such a thing as an AI indistinguishable from a human. Why would an AI be vain? Why would an AI have a desire to reproduce? they wouldn't. These basic desires drive much of human behavior: the desire to reproduce, the desire to be wanted. An AI simply wouldn't have them. A human having a conversation with an AI would pretty quickly be able to pick up on the fact that the AI lacks these desires. These desires do not arise out of simply being intelligent. They come from our biological needs: which a robot would not share. There is no reason to fear losing our humanity if we replace our body parts with robotic ones.

That is not to say that we should do this. We should definitely not get too cavalier about replacing our bodies. Why? because we should remember that as a species we tend to undervalue ordinary things. It is one thing to give a person who has lost an arm a robotic replacement, another thing to chop off your arm so that you can have a robotic one. Arms, after all, are quite capable things: and they come for free. We should take care of our bodies, and appreciate them. But, our bodies do not define us either: it is our emotions which make us human. Some day soon we will likely see the first true cyborg. Whipping up hysteria based on myths and superstitions over that possibility won't help prepare anyone for it. Let us instead have a real conversation using what we know about ourselves. 

Demystifying Revelations: Re-appropriation

Ah Revelations, aka the Apocalypse of St. John of Patmos. The favorite text of cult leaders and demagogues the world over. That book that mainline Protestants try to pretend doesn't exist. It's a fantastical almost nonsensical prediction of the end of the world...or is it?
Not so fast. Taken out of it's historical context, this text is a complete mystery. It reads like the ravings of a madman or a really bad LSD trip. But let's take a trip back in time to the early 2nd Century AD, and let's meet our author.

He's a small man, with curly brown hair and brown eyes like most of his countrymen. He's young, and wears an undyed tunic although his well-groomed nails and lustrous hair speak to his status. A cloak in faded red and brown drapes over his chair, with the simple brass shoulder pin still attached. Most would call it a fibula, but Ioannes would chew you out for using that Latin word. He scratches furiously on the papyrus, but his handwriting is surprisingly legible despite his speed. Still, the letters trip over each other in their haste to reach the end of the page. Despite his youth, you know he is already an accomplished writer. The chain that hangs around his neck holds a cross, but it's tucked inside his tunic near his heart. Ioannes is a quiet and meek man, a man you would never have noticed if he didn't go to Penelope's house for church. He winces. He'll need his wrist wrapped when he's done but you know better than to interrupt him. He's rewriting his book, his Apocalypse. It's the hot new thing up in Athens they say, a short text that reads like the ravings of a street-corner soothsayer. A fair number of them are little more than that. But not the one Ioannes is writing out now, you know. You corrected his first copy, and you know it's message.

It is a call to revolution, against Rome. He's writing an Apocalypse in order to maintain some deniability, after all most such writings are in fact just meaningless fancies. Yet, when this hits the streets it will be a match to set this tinderbox on fire. Up in Ephesus you heard about some kid who set that huge Roman temple on fire. Hellas has never borne the Roman yoke easily, and Rome has always been ambivalent about it's feelings towards the people of this peninsula. On the one hand, they revere your ancient culture: and on the other it is a threat to their power. There have been other rebellions against Roman rule of course, but none got very far. Right now, Rome controls something all-important. You pull a drachma from your purse, there, the face stamped onto it's surface: Alexandros o Megas, Alexander the Great.

You smile, and look at Ioannes. He is about to commit the greatest heist in history without breaking a window or flashing a knife. It's a simple enough trick, childishly simple in fact. It was inspired by the Rabbi whom Penelope managed to bring in from Antioch, who gave a sermon on the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac. He explained that the shining ram which God gave to Abraham to sacrifice instead of Isaac was the Egyptian god Ammon, whom Abraham had been sacrificing to out of fear and habit. Ioannes had pulled out his tablet and scratched that into the wax. He carried that with him wherever he went, for he always said that one could never predict inspiration. Then he'd scratched "they say Alexander is the son of Ammon" in the wax, and grinned at you with fire dancing in his eyes. You looked at him confused, and then you realized. The key to defeating the Romans was to take Alexander away from them: and the key to doing that was to use this Jewish story. Alexander was the son of Ammon, the lamb is the son of the ram. You take out your stylus and raise an eyebrow. Ioannes nods, you can write something. You write "Christ is the lamb of God" on his tablet. his eyes get large, and he nods. He likes the idea. The code isn't hard to break, but they won't be able to prove anything either. It's a perfect crime really, one that the victim won't even know is happening. By merging Christ and Alexander, Ioannes can steal the symbol of your culture back from the Romans right under their noses. The ancient prophecy that he who controls Alexander's body shall rule Asia is as true now as it was when it was made. We cannot steal his physical body, lying in state in Alexandria. But we can steal his literary body, by stealing the most famous text about his life: Plutarch's Life of Alexander. We can simply substitute the personified city of Jerusalem for Princess Stateira, and lift the wedding scene from Plutarch, as our ending. This is the story Ioannes is now copying out. He stops, and looks up at you with a tired smile.

Revelations is not the only Plutarch rip-off, although it is certainly the best-crafted one. It is also the most historically significant one. What John of Patmos did here, is extremely clever. He re-appropriated the figure of Alexander right under Rome's nose.  The text never explicitly says that The Lamb is Jesus, nor does it introduce The Lamb in any way. It expects you to know who this is: because John's original readers did know. They had a picture of him in their pocket. It is a merging of Jesus and Alexander: and by merging the two figures, John is stealing Alexander back from Rome. Rome quite literally stole Alexander's body: The Emperor Augustus had his own head affixed to a copy of Alexander's statue. He also metaphorically stole Alexander by claiming the titles that Alexander had used: "son of Ammon", being one of them. Thus began the cult of the Roman Emperors, which became the source of conflict between Rome and Judea: which became the foundation for Christianity.

But, when John set pen to paper, there was no such thing as "Christianity".  There were Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and gentile converts who looked to Jesus as a prophet of a new age. As soon as John of Patmos was done with his manuscript however, Christianity had emerged. From what? from the union of Alexander, the representation of Hellenism as a philosophy, and the city of Jerusalem as the representation of Jewish culture. A part of Christianity that many have tried to deny, because it is in some ways uncomfortable. Yet, one cannot deny it when confronted by the Lamb. This name derives from the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac: which is one of a few stories that is told twice in the Toraic narrative. In one story, no ram is mentioned and Isaac seems to die. The text cryptically says that Abraham "and his family" returned to their home. Many have read this as the "bad ending", where Abraham abandons God and kills Isaac who is God's gift: preferring instead to retain his polytheistic lifestyle. The other story mentions the shining ram that suddenly appears caught in the thorn bush, and explicitly says that Isaac comes home with Abraham: because the ram was sacrificed instead. Now, like all biblical stories there is more than one possible interpretation here: but a very likely one is that we are dealing with a story about choosing between God's gifts, and appeasing other gods.

The writers of the Old Testament took an interesting view of the many gods that were worshiped by other peoples: a view more reminiscent of the one that the ancient Persians had, than of the conventional interpretation that Jews and Christians today have. Today, we ascribe no power to the statues of gods that we find in the ruins of ancient civilizations: we use them, but merely as symbols. Some more conservative cults view ancient (or modern) gods as demons or lies of Satan. However, the ancient writers do not attempt to deny the existence or power of other gods, nor do they attribute them to a semi-divine evil. The gods of the Canaanites and the Egyptians, the Assyrians and the Hittites are all real, to the ancient Jews. These are all powerful divine entities, with the very real ability to help and harm people.

Today we ask people if they "believe in" God, but that would have seemed an absurd question to ask someone in the ancient world: as indeed it would still be an absurd question in say Japan or India. Ancient people, like modern Hindus or Shinto practitioners, didn't "believe" gods existed: they personified and worshiped forces that did exist. People didn't worship every god of course, just the ones they needed favors from or needed to ward against. The Jews worshiped only their own deity, the personification of their own civilization: and believed that this deity took care of all of their needs. But, it was difficult for the early Jews to always maintain that belief. Thus the story of Abraham and Isaac. Presumably Abraham has been sacrificing to Ammon, the god of the sun, so that his cattle will have water. Perhaps he doesn't even view it as worship, since he detests Ammon and the sun (being a herder and all).  This would then be why God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. But, in the "good ending" story: God gives Abraham the choice to sacrifice Ammon (who was often represented as a ram, or ram-headed) instead, to fully trust that God will take care of him.

This interpretation is clearly what the writer of Revelations had in mind, because understanding the character of The Lamb requires this interpretation. The shining ram that Abraham sacrifices is not just a random animal but a god, a god who had a child. Now the child isn't specifically the historical figure that we know as Alexander. Alexander was only one incarnation of Ammon's child. Ammon was the King of the Egyptian Gods in the New Kingdom period: better known to you probably as Ammon-Ra. His son was the Pharaoh of Egypt. Now, there hadn't actually been a Pharaoh of Egypt for a while when John of Patmos penned his book. But, partially because of the practice of mummification, people didn't really think of them as history. Alexander himself, dead for several hundred years, looked like he would wake up from a nap at any time. We have Julius Caesar's astounded description of his three hundred year old corpse: wavy strawberry blond silver-streaked hair, light olive skin, dark brows and eyelashes, chiseled features, a smile still hanging on his perfectly curved lips.  It's hard to think of a body this well preserved as dead, much less as a historical figure.  That was, of course, the point. And it is exactly this which John of Patmos is using. In his time, people still believe in the power of Alexander, in the power that owning his body has: and this is the source of the Romans' hold on power in the lands outside of Italy. Their claim to legitimacy rests on claiming that they are the rightful successors to Alexander and the Ptolemaic dynasty: chosen by the god Ammon. And it is that claim which Revelations undermines. It claims that Jesus is instead the rightful successor to Alexander and the Ptolemies: that Jesus is the true son of Ammon. Ammon who is now one with God, having been sacrificed by Abraham: according to the logic that the Romans themselves used in sacrificial rituals.

This brings me to the reason that this book is included in the Bible. Christians do not believe that the holy book comes straight from the mouth of God. Divinely inspired yes, but written and crafted by mortal hands. The Bible was put together at the Council of Nicea, centuries after the gospels were written: and most of the gospels weren't written at the time of the events they depict. John of Patmos himself was writing almost a century after Christ's death. No church, to my knowledge, disputes these facts about the Bible. At first blush Revelations seems to have almost nothing to do with the rest of the books in the Bible. This is the reason that mainline Protestants tend to ignore it: it seems like it has no real reason for being included. But it does.

This book created Christianity as a separate phenomenon from Judaism. Jesus did not create a religion, nor was he trying to. He was a Jew, and he saw himself as a reformer: perhaps as a Prophet, in the mold of Samuel and Elijah.  Paul and Thekla weren't creating a religion either: they were leading a revolutionary and counter-cultural movement. Religion and politics went hand in hand in Ancient Rome, to be loyal to the Emperor was to worship the Emperor. Mystery cults of particular gods, in the time of John of Patmos, were all the rage: cults devoted to recreating and sharing in a particular god's mythology. People of all backgrounds and all types were participating in these cults: and there were fashionable ones, like the cult of Mithras. Because of this context, any counter-cultural movement was necessarily religious. Secular societies, such as the Stoics, simply could not mobilize in any meaningful way. Stoic resistance to the excesses of the Roman Empire was frequent, and constant: but completely futile. Religions however, had threatened Rome since it's early days: even if they had also been it's salvation in times of crisis. 

The first Christians knew very well the story of the Parthian mother goddess and the Galli.  In the 3rd Century BCE, even as the flesh-and-blood Alexander marched across Central Asia, Rome was sacked by the Celts. With the city in flames and it's government in disarray, the fledgeling republic turned to it's sacred heart: the Sybiline prophecies. Supposedly these scrolls foretold the city's destiny. Though in reality it's likely the prophecies were an invention, used by the city's elite to convince the rest of the people that whatever happened was destiny. Of course, that works as long as you actually manage to achieve world domination. In any case the scrolls supposedly said that the city needed a statue of this Parthian mother goddess and a group of her priests, the Galli, to care for it. The political motivation for this has been obscured by the centuries, but presumably there was one. And, as it happened, one was available: thanks to Alexander torching Persepolis.

 The statue was one thing, the cult another. Bringing a new god into Rome would ordinarily not be seen as a bad thing, and bringing in a mother goddess seems like a sensible idea when you need to rebuild a city. But this mother goddess was something that Rome was not ready for. She wasn't Demeter or Hera, goddesses who were powerful but who supported and upheld the masculine paradigm that dominated ancient Greece and Rome (and indeed much of the ancient world). Her cult was akin to, and probably an offshoot of, the cult of Kali-maa in India: a cult still very much alive today. It's unique feature is that it believes, not in feminine equality, but in feminine supremacy.  The foundational myth is of the war goddess Durga transforming into the bestial Kali to battle a demon so strong all the other gods working together couldn't have defeated it. The battle is epic, for the demon has many forms and many lives. Finally it is dead, but Kali is overcome by bloodlust and does not stop her rampage. Afraid that she will kill all the other gods, her husband Shiva lies down in her path. When she steps on him, she realizes her mistake and stops. Now, one must understand that Shiva is the god of death: one of the strongest and most worshiped gods in the Hindu pantheon. Death submits to Kali: and this is the ironclad basis of this cult's belief system. The feminine ability to create life cheats death of it's power over humanity: allowing all things (Hindus believe) to go through the cycle of reincarnation. Kali incorporates all that is terrifying, and all that is amazing, about the reproductive process: and the cult of Kali sternly teaches men to accept the process in all it's horror and glory, as Shiva did. This was the goddess which the Romans now had to reckon with.

But the Parthians had taken things one step further from the Indians. The landscape of Northern India is dotted with citadels constructed by Kali-worshiping princes, so fanatically devoted to their goddess that they fought to annihilation rather than be conquered by the Mughals. But the Parthians had one-upped their southern compatriots thousands of years earlier. The Galli were not simply priests, they were eunuchs. Not men who had been enslaved and forcefully castrated: no, these were free men who had castrated themselves in a public ceremony. Even their home society had trouble accepting them. But, the awful power of their goddess could not be denied: she kept the fields fertile and the rivers full. If Parthia had an uneasy relationship with this cult, Rome was going to have an even more troubled time.

Rome was founded on a firm belief in the supremacy of masculine excellence. Young and vigorous men were the source of Rome's glory, it was believed: and very few had dared to question this.  The practice of castrating men was taboo in Rome, even if wealthy Romans frequently had eunuch slaves just like everyone else. Eunuchs were objects of scorn, even if they hadn't chosen their situation. When the Romans witnessed the initiation rites for the Parthian goddess, they were shocked and disgusted: the citizens very nearly revolted. This was given the provision that no Roman citizen could join the cult. However, even in the beginning there were Roman men who looked not with disgust but with jealousy. As the centuries wore on, there were more and more petitions from Roman citizens to join the cult. Yes, Roman men petitioning the state to let them castrate themselves. Eventually, the Emperor reluctantly agreed to let even Roman citizens into the cult.  Christians were around by this time, and they saw this. The power of this mystery cult to both induce ideological change in individuals, and to force the hand of the mighty Roman Empire, was lost on no one. 

Don't you think it's odd, that the bringers of the apocalypse are horsemen? I did. Why should they be horsemen, in a book full of monsters and talking animals? why something as mundane as horsemen? The answer is that they are horsemen, because they are Macedonians. They are Alexander's chief generals: Ptolemy, Parmenio, Cleitus and Seleukas. It's not even that hard to work out which is which. Parmenio is Death: for he was killed on Alexander's orders.  Ptolemy is War (Conquest): for he was the one most renowned for his military might. Cleitus is Famine: because he razed Thebes, and because of his scorched-earth campaign in Central Asia. Seleukas is Pestilence: because the Empire he created after Alexander's death was seen as a bastion of immorality and decadence. Stealing these four would furthermore have been just as important as stealing Alexander because they are pivotal to Alexander's legacy.

Alexander could not have done what he did without them: without their skills and their support. The story of Alexander is not simply the story of a single remarkable individual: although the real Alexander was indeed remarkable. It is the story of many remarkable individuals working together towards a common goal. Ptolemy is rightly revered for his own deeds. The Egypt that he chased the Persian garrison out of in 334 BC was a nation hurting from betrayal and languishing in obscurity. It's economy was in shambles, it had no military of it's own, and it was culturally stuck in the past.  By the end of his life, Egypt was the economic and cultural powerhouse that it had traditionally been once again, and with the military power to back that up. Parmenio was an old man in Alexander's time, a friend of his father King Philip. He had accompanied Philip through all of his exploits, and then went on to ably defend Alexander's rear. His death was a tragedy worthy of the stage: his son Philotas committed treason, so Parmenio had to be killed in order to prevent a blood feud.  Cleitus might have had a mean streak (and a drinking problem), but he was an inspirational leader to his own soldiers and a street-savvy politician whom several future Roman Emperors took as a role model (including arguably the greatest: Trajan).  Seleukas was also an able ruler and a shrewd diplomat: unifying a dizzying variety of ethnic groups under his banner, and allying himself with a young Chandragupta Maurya, before anyone else had realized this eighteen year old pretty-boy prince was a force to be reckoned with. He poured his share of the war booty into artistic projects, some of which still exist in some form. He was also a great city-builder, probably responsible for three of the four cities that bore the name "Alexandria", and definitely responsible for Palmyra. If Alexander had never existed, these four men would still be remembered for their own deeds and qualities. But because they were his generals they had a ludicrously outsized impact on world history: to the point where it's easy even for modern commentators to forget these were men.

But what does any of this have to do with modern society? I'm talking here about events that took place at least 2,000 years ago. Because Revelations is an example of something that some postmodernists have attempted to argue is impossible: re-appropriation. An extraordinarily successful example. Love it or hate it, Christianity is one of the most wildly successful social movements in all of human history: and John's little book is one of the major reasons why. For all it's weirdness, it made a convincing argument: the Emperor in Rome is no true successor to the great Alexander, Jesus is.
Indeed, Revelations managed to so entangle the myth of Alexander with the myth of Christ that Christianity actually co-opted Alexander's cult: the cult of Sol Invictus. Ever wondered why Christians end prayers with the word "Amen"? I did. It's the Hebrew form of the Egyptian name Ammon. This practice is a holdover from the cult of Sol Invictus.  That is not to say this hasn't created problems. Indeed many of the problematic ideas in Christianity, modern or historical, can be traced to the cult of Sol Invictus. And, as ideas about sex and therefore marriage changed: people reinterpreted the wedding imagery in Revelations, leading to anti-Semitic ideas like that Jerusalem needs to be conquered by Christians before the Apocalypse comes (double whammy, misogyny AND anti-semitism). However, Revelations still provides a fantastic example of how to re-appropriate a symbol, and of just how powerful actually pulling that off can be.

Agent Hotchner: the Leader of Leaders

When your main cast are all cops, no matter of what description, you have a problem you need to solve. Law Enforcement attracts natural leaders, and if you are a woman or other type of minority you have to be a dominant personality to make it. Most cops are natural leaders, independent people who don't like those that interfere with them but try to interfere with others. Often they have deep-seated issues with authority. How do you keep a cast full of these people together? how do they cooperate effectively if none of them want to follow each others' instructions? how can they work together if they are constantly meddling in each others' affairs? There are a few ways of course. One is to have them all be recognized experts in a skill, and establish those boundaries firmly early on. This can set the story up for a devastating twist if one of the team members is lost. But, there's another route to take as well: one that allows the team to survive even if it's composition changes. A super-leader. A character who is inspirational enough that otherwise aggressively dominant people look to them for guidance and discipline.

Like Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner, from Criminal Minds. yeah yeah, that show again. I binge just like the rest of you ok. Hotchner, or "Hotch" as he is known is not the type of character you expect on this type of show. In fact, he's more like the typical hero of a Noir film or a Western: a man with a dark past seeking personal redemption. Hotch used to be a Federal Prosecutor, with the unsettling stare to prove it. It's never quite said: but it's clear what happened. Hotch hated putting people to death whom he believed had a chance to change. As an FBI agent he has both the ability to stop people from getting so far that they have to be killed, and the ability to offer plea deals so that they won't face that possibility. But there is one important respect in which Hotch is not like a typical Noir or Western film hero: he's not a loner. In fact, he was the one who assembled the BAU team: before him, BAU detectives worked alone as simple consultants for local police. What's particularly intriguing about him as a character, is that despite his position of authority he is not an aggressive man. Rather, he is a natural defender. He never threatens someone unless it's to protect someone else, nor does he ever shoot except to defend someone else. In the whole series, Hotch never attacks with a gun or even shoots to defend his own person: it is always to defend either a victim, a team member, or some other ally. Pretty surprising when you consider that just about every episode has a gunshot in it somewhere. Nor is Hotch ever aggressive towards his colleagues, even when he's angry. If he does get snappy, it's because pressure is being placed on him from outside. He is however, stubborn. Challenging him head on is an exercise in futility, he just digs his heels in deeper and deeper. He simply does not give up. This is a flaw, and sometimes it certainly drives the other characters nuts or even leads the team into danger. But it's also why he can do his job. Hotch can go toe to toe with the worst scum of humanity and not become like them himself because he is stubbornly committed to goodness.

That is not to say however that he cannot empathize with the killers. In fact, he does. Hotch's best quality is that he is unwilling to look away from them, no matter how horrific their actions. Hotch refuses to shy away from walking the tightrope between empathizing with the very real pain that many of these people feel, and condoning their actions. In fact, he is often the first person to confront them with the question of why they believe that their actions logically follow from their emotional experiences. Many are genuinely surprised to learn that others feel the same emotions they do, but don't feel the need to kill or hurt others because of it. That is, when the villain of the week isn't a good old fashioned psychopath. There are plenty of those on Criminal Minds too: for the non-dramatic filler episodes that they don't expect the audience to remember. Or for the multi-episode arcs where the killer attacks one of the team members personally. These, Hotch doesn't bother trying to empathize with because he knows it won't do any good. The only thing to do with them is to put them in the slammer.  But, a killer need not be a psychopath: and indeed the most common type of villain presented on the show is not. The most common type is the sexual sadist. Hotch is the perfect foil to this type of killer: because he represents everything they think they are (if they are also narcissists), or wish they could be. They fantasize about being dominant, and perceive themselves as underappreciated: but Hotch actually is dominant. He is in fact given genuine and undisguised fealty by other dominant personalities. Yet he has gained that place by doing exactly the opposite of what the killers think that dominant people do. These killers fail to elude him, no matter how smart they are, because they've been misled. It's a deconstruction of toxic masculinity, which is not what we expect from a cop show.

Yes, I did just say "fealty".  It's a word that Americans don't like and for good reason. But, it's warranted here. Several times, the tech analyst Garcia outright calls Hotch "my liege". Although she has a flair for the dramatic, it is very clear in this context that she isn't really joking. When Agent Jareau gets what is obviously a better job, Hotch actually has to twist her arm to get her to take it: and she comes back after only a few episodes. Now, Agent Jareau is one of these dominant personalities that Hotch nevertheless is able to command. Like I said before, in order to make it as a woman in law enforcement you have to be a dominant personality. In fact the show goes out of it's way to highlight how much of a dominant she is in the episode "Jones". In this episode the local NOPD detective, William LaMontagne Jr. a clearly submissive man trying and failing to fill his father's big shoes, falls for her while the team is working on a case there.  In the next season he reappears at Agent Gideon's resignation party where he and Jareau have a heartfelt conversation. This conversation ends with an astonishing twist: he commits to giving up his career as a cop in order to move halfway across the country, marry her and be a stay-at-home dad. She didn't ask him to do this, and it isn't presented as a sacrifice. It's clear that he actually wanted to get out of that job, and away from the gender expectations of the Cajun culture he was raised in. French-influenced Cajun culture does tend to place a lot of pressure on men to take leadership positions, as well as to be domineering in their personal interactions. When confronted with a naturally dominant woman he instantly throws all of that to the wind: showing maturity and unusual self-acceptance. Rather than seeing himself as cowardly or weak, he revels in playing a supportive role alongside an aggressive and tough leader.

Agent Jareau's aggression is emotional rather than physical, because she is female and fighting with larger stronger opponents wouldn't be very smart. But she is unafraid to attack a killers' delusions head on or hit them where it hurts in order to flush them out, even if it paints a target on her head. However, as a member of the BAU, she never actually has to make herself a target. Hotch always has her engineer the statements made to the press so that he will be the target of the killer's rage. And this is the primary reason why Agent Jareau feels the way she does towards Hotch. She knows he sacrifices his own safety to protect her on a regular basis.

Secondarily, despite being in a position of official authority, Hotch has no trouble letting Jareau be something of the team mom. She has the authority to decide which cases the team works on, and he allows her quite a bit of freedom in doing her job. He does not feel threatened even when she needs to be handed more authority. Once he even outright asks her to take on more authority for a case where her particular talent for communications is critical to getting a favorable outcome. He lets her handle meddling reporters, and his orders to her are deliberately vague. In other words, he does not question her loyalty to the team.

This is one of his most interesting traits. Although he is in a position of official authority, Agent Hotchner has never demanded personal loyalty from any of the team. This is precisely why he can do what he does: he demands loyalty to the team, but has no concern for whether people are loyal to him. This is of course because he isn't in this position for the purpose of having power: he's here on a personal mission. People are loyal to Hotch precisely because he doesn't demand it. In particular, Agent Morgan is fanatically loyal to Hotch, but he would never choose to follow a man who demanded loyalty. At one point, Hotch needs to give up his leadership position for the benefit of the team. Morgan is the one who takes over. But when Agent Rossi voices concern that Morgan might not be willing to give up his position, not only is Hotch unfazed he's actually dismissive. He is completely correct to be: Morgan hands over power without any question or trouble, as soon as Hotch is allowed to be back in charge. Now, Morgan is another natural leader: and also falls into the category of "could only have made it by being aggressively dominant" because Morgan is black. He's been willing to grab power for his own advancement before. But he is genuinely troubled when Hotch asks him to take over power, not because he believes that he's incapable of doing the job, but because it goes against what he views as the natural order of the world. This is why I used the word "fealty". Morgan isn't simply loyal to Hotch, he isn't simply willing to put his life on the line for Hotch. He believes that it's a violation of the world's natural order if Hotch isn't in charge of the team.

Now, not everyone on the team believes in the idea of a natural world order: Morgan is somewhat unusual in that regard. But there's nothing unusual about his feelings towards Hotch: when Agent Strauss (who is Hotch's boss) is attempting to remove him from power, the team members all speak up for him vociferously. They all not only believe he should be on the team, but that he should be it's leader: again, despite most of them being naturally dominant personalities.  These are not people who usually feel like they need a leader, they're more likely to resent authority figures than to feel like they need one. They can operate independently, and they are unafraid to question anyone claiming authority including Hotch. But, they become almost desperately afraid at the idea that Hotch could be taken away from them. Those team members who aren't naturally dominant, express their fealty in a more overt way. Garcia outright calls Hotch "my liege" more than once, and Dr. Reid shows him filial piety. Reid has issues trusting people, though with good reason: his mother is schizophrenic. But he trusts Hotch beyond what would be normal for a friend or battle comrade: not just with his life and his darkest secrets. No, Reid is willing to let Hotch hurt him for the greater good. He once comes up with a plan to outwit a killer that involves Hotch kicking him (so that he can steal Hotch's second gun and use it to incapacitate the heavily armed criminal). He is later genuinely surprised that Hotch was gentle with him. 

Now, yes, Reid is in need of a father figure. But why does he show this level of devotion to Hotch and not to Agent Gideon or Agent Rossi? Because Hotch with worthy. Because Hotch reacts to this love appropriately, by mirroring it back. When Reid is in trouble, Hotch goes on the warpath. The thing is, Hotch finds Reid annoying. They don't like each other, if they didn't work together they would probably never be friends. But because Reid expects Hotch to look out for his welfare, Hotch does an impeccable job of doing just that: without any expectation of reward. In fact, he faces punishment for doing that and doesn't care. And it is this which finally explains why he has the position that he has, why he deserves to be the leader of this team. Why, if there is such a thing as a natural order for the world, then part of that is Hotch being in charge. He goes all out for people he doesn't even like, even when facing punishment from superiors, without any expectation of reward. He can lead people who are natural leaders because he is selfless. When he decides what to do, the question he asks himself is "what does this person need?" not "what do I feel like doing?"

This is even true when he's dealing with the killers. He's not thinking about what they want, after all he knows what they want. He's thinking about what they need in order to grow as people, and be productive members of society. Many of them have compulsions or addictions, either to the killing itself or to torture. Jail and therapy could very well lead to them actually kicking their habit. An addiction to hurting people is not fundamentally different from an addiction to alcohol or drugs, in terms of brain chemistry.  Others, especially the younger ones, could simply outgrow their problems in jail. Many young terrorists do grow up to regret their actions, their youthful disaffection wearing off as they fully mature and their life situation changes.

Criminal Minds: Focus on the Heroes, not the Villains

Serial Killers often get romanticized. They are often handsome, charming, charismatic or perhaps just daredevils. Their twisted minds are fascinating to us neurotypical schmucks, their lives are full of danger and adventure appealing to the animal instincts in all of us. Their behavior satisfies our desires for deviance and rebellion: we start to see the victims as they do, as symbols of society's corruption. We forget that they were human beings just like us.  Sometimes the cops who catch them are even demonized or blamed for causing more problems, although the most loved ones commit suicide before they can be caught. The line between freedom fighter or soldier of God, and serial killer can get hazy. Some would say there is no line at all. Too often, Hollywood plays into this narrative about killers. This narrative that tells our boys that the way to solve their problems is with a gun or a knife.  Noirs are often full of gray morality, with the detective often being little better than the criminal.  Even worse: stories of murderous duos are made into romance stories or buddy stories. Like the classic Noir, Criminal Minds satisfies the audience's desire to examine the mind of a serial killer. Unlike a classic Noir, Criminal Minds does not glamorize the killer. It glamorizes the agents who take down the killer.
Now, the FBI that exists on the show is highly idealized even if still imperfect. It's response to racism, sexism and homophobia is what we would like to see from a governmental organization, but not what we actually see. What we actually have is an FBI that spends more time investigating the sex lives of kids who went to a nightclub rather than the life of the man who gunned them down. An agency that prefers to act as the morality police, while perpetrators get away thanks to corruption and local police incompetence or unpreparedness. The Behavioral Analysis Unit is real, but they're more likely to be reading this blog for signs of anarchist sympathies, than catching a terrorist or a murderer. The government we have is so far from understanding how real humans behave that they would seriously consider the possibility that terrorists used the general chat of a video game to communicate. A chat log that millions of people worldwide are reading in real time. In the age of Onion routers that seems highly implausible to say the least. Nevermind that reading these chat logs meant snooping on thousands of peoples'  sexual lives, as well as other private business. All of that however is unimportant for the show. After all, the purpose of fiction is to imagine what is possible: what could be but isn't.
What could be, is an FBI who truly tries their hardest to protect the citizens of this nation. What could be, is a BAU that turns their brilliant minds to catching the sickest criminals in the world. What could be, is a government that leverages every resource to keep it's citizens safe and help them live better lives. What could be, is a team of heroic agents who put their lives on the line for each other and the potential victims of killers every day. If they were soldiers, they would be the most decorated in the world after what they've been through during the series. They've sacrificed other careers, marriage, and sometimes their physical or mental health. Although they live in America among all the comforts of ordinary society, they have more in common with people living in war zones. They are five people with totally different personalities, all motivated by a common purpose: to deliver justice. They all know that despite their impressive talents, they cannot always succeed. They are all complicated people who make mistakes: but there is no question that they are heroes. When push comes to shove, they choose good over evil every time. That is what separates them definitively from the people they hunt: whether those people are troubled kids, vengeful victims, or remorseless psychos. But the show is not about the killers or about their kills. It's not about the victims like Law & Order SVU, or the crime scenes like CSI. It's about the BAU agents themselves. The villains and victims are foils for the agents, designed to bring out their character traits: to challenge them and make them grow.
This is not a reality show, nor is it designed to feel like one. Of course all the science is researched and at least plausible if not 100% agreed upon. All the theories that the agents use to profile the suspects are regarded as at least plausible by scientists, and the forensics is beyond controversy. But, the suspects are carefully thought out. They are not for the most part actual killers, although all the episodes are likely based on actual cases. But both the killers and the agents are based on literary tropes, and the structure of the episodes is literary.
The show has a standard villain-of-the-week structure: with the killer generally being apprehended at the end of each episode, even if he is going to appear again later. This structure is used to drive home the show's point: the killers are actually less interesting than the people who catch them. The most common types of killer are presented as actually being common: the sexual sadist, the pure psychopath, the home invader, the vigilante. This makes them, for the audience, routine: a filler episode. The audience knows to expect that the bulk of the episode will be spent on interpersonal relationships, not on the daring escapades or gory details of the villain. There won't be anything particularly interesting about the villain: instead we'll likely be introduced to a great side character, and/or treated to some team drama. There are of course the memorable villains: the serial murderers with huge body counts, the avengers, stalkers, terrorists, psychotics with lurid delusions, the mentally ill or impaired who accidentally kill, the teams, the weird cults etc. Here, the viewer knows, the villain(s) will be chosen as a foil to one of the team's members or for the team as a whole. These episodes might take some twists and turns, and even become half-season story arcs. But at no time is there ever a season-long villain. This has to be done on purpose, in the era when television is straying more and more towards long arcs and away from it's episodic roots. The purpose is to keep the focus squarely on the heroes. It is to reinforce the idea that the purpose of the killers is to test the heroes, to make them grow. There are season-long arcs, and it is important to watch the episodes in order: but they are focused solely on the heroes, whether it's about one team member's personal growth or the growth of a relationship between two of the team members. This is a meditation on the darkest parts of humanity, and the evil at the heart of our society: it only masquerades as a detective thriller.

Marco Polo: Criticism versus Demonization.

Imperialism is bad. However, it is important to remember why imperialism is bad. Concentrating power in the hands of one person is bad. But it's easy to forget why it is bad. The 2014-2016 TV show Marco Polo deftly reminds the audience of why imperialism and concentrating power in the hands of one person is bad. It does so without resorting to exaggeration, dehumanization or demonization. Indeed, it shows how demonization, exaggeration and dehumanization are the tools of Imperialism: not the tools to break it down. Kublai Khan and Prime Minister Jia are nemeses: long-time foes, in some ways so similar but also in fundamental ways so different. And both are sympathetic. These are both people who have, at various times in history, been called both heroes and demons. But this show feels no need to choose one as it's hero and the other as it's villain. Indeed, one of the best things about TV shows is that, due to their episodic nature, they do not need to pick heroes and villains: a character can be an antagonist in one episode and the protagonist in the next one.

Jia is not the villain, and his actions are both patently cruel and entirely sympathetic. [Side note: he is frequently referred to in the show as "Sidao", but this is his given name. Like all Chinese people, he puts his family name first: so his full name is Jia Sidao, but he would be addressed as "Mr. Jia"] The show gives the audience a true appreciation of the impossible situation that Jia finds himself in: a virtual prisoner within his walled city, taking care of a boy Emperor who doesn't even know what being Emperor means yet.  He is a mouse sitting inside a trap, and he knows it. Or as he himself might have said: a grasshopper in a cage, being stroked with a brush. That is Jia's favorite pastime, provoking grasshoppers to fight: so much so, that he is called the "cricket minister" by his enemies. But it isn't simply for amusement. Like everything Prime Minister Jia does, it has a purpose. He observes the grasshoppers, learning how they move. This is, by the way, a real thing that Chinese scholars did and they developed something called "grasshopper kung fu", which was based on the movements of grasshoppers and which was extremely hard for the uninitiated to combat. Mostly due to how few people knew about it. But in a metaphorical sense, Kublai Khan is holding a brush over Jia and making him twitch. He knows he cannot win the physical battle against the Khan.

However, he can win the political battle. He can inspire the people of southern China to believe in the Song Dynasty as they never did when it was at it's height. [side note: the name of the dynasty is not a translation. Their name was "Song" also written as "Tsung" or "Tsong".]  He can make the Khan regret taking the city, make him pay for victory with blood and tears. Jia is a commoner, who worked alongside his sister Mei Lin to become Prime Minister. He's clearly also a child prodigy, he can't be more than 30. In many ways he's similar to Kublai Khan: practical, willing to make sacrifices for the greater good, calm under pressure, a good long-term planner.  And like Kublai, Jia is willing to take power by any means necessary. However, unlike Kublai, Jia overestimates how much power he truly has. He believes too strongly in the ritual words of flattery and in the power inherent in his office as Prime Minister, too much in the loyalties of people who have no reason to love him or his cause. Kublai Khan knows that in order to keep someone's loyalty, you have to give them something that they want. Jia ultimately fails because he tried to shunt aside the Empress Dowager, he tried to make himself regent for the new Emperor. Because of this, the Mongols have enough loyalists in the South that they can hold onto it: even as revolutionaries fight fiercely. Jia's machinations give Kublai just enough leverage to destroy the Song and their legacy.

Of course, Kublai Khan is no conquering hero. He's a man who stole the throne, and has never sat easily on it. He must generate goodwill from his people by expanding the Empire, and even that doesn't completely stave off rebellion. After all, not every Mongol sees the Empire as completely beneficial. They worry about losing their traditional way of life, especially when they look at Kublai's half-Chinese son Jingim. In order to control Northern China, the Mongols had to take on some traditions and to move their administrative center to China. They gave the city a Mongol name, Cambulak, but there isn't really any escaping the fact that it's China. Nor is there any escaping the fact that Kublai is both Khan and Emperor. He has to wear that golden robe with the five-toed dragon: otherwise the Chinese will revolt. But to the Mongols, it looks like he's selling out. Things are hardly that cut and dry of course: Katie Jones gave both the characters costumes that delicately balance Chinese and Mongol aesthetics. Kublai keeps his clan's traditional hairstyle, but tends to wear Chinese style slippers: the obvious reason being comfort.  Jingim wears his hair in a Chinese fashion, not that the girls are complaining, but also wears the traditional Mongol boots and his robes are cut in a decidedly more Mongol fashion: at the knee, rather than the ankle length that would be typical of Chinese civilian clothing. Although made from silk, they are also considerably more tailored: he knows he has a great figure, whereas his father uses the Chinese cut of his robe to disguise his beer gut.

The show also feels no need to demonize Arik or Kaidu: the two rebellious chieftains who challenged Kublai Khan's rule. In particular, the show treats Kaidu very sympathetically: and does an excellent job of showing off how complicated he was. While Arik was mainly just a straw-man conservative: Kaidu is something entirely different. Yes, he's a skeptic of the Empire: but he isn't simply afraid of change. Indeed, Kaidu is an agent of change, just as much as Kublai or Jingim. His vision is for a more egalitarian Mongol society: with female leaders, and an elected ruler who is not put above his people. Kaidu is a man in a family of strong women, who genuinely respects them and sternly teaches his son to do the same. His vision of the Mongols'  future is based on a romanticized notion of the distant past: but it is very much a vision of the future that takes into account the political realities of the present day. In other words, he's a feminist several hundred years before that word was even invented: and he's committed enough to start a war. The only thing he hasn't banked on, is Marco's bizarre willingness to protect people who have hurt him. He would have succeeded in killing Kublai to take the throne if not for Marco's last-minute and unexpected intervention. Marco Polo, the son of a disgraced merchant, decided the fate of half the world by stabbing Kaidu in the back. It's almost a tragedy, because Kaidu is a genuinely noble man.

Yet Kaidu's death makes room for another noble man to succeed. Jingim Khan is not known in the West, for a good reason. He was not an expansionist. Having been elected fairly, Jingim had no need for aggressive foreign policy. He was forced into an isolationist stance by the Catholic church's racism, despite them having a common interest in defeating the Ottoman Caliphate. He chose to neither aid nor fight them, which probably led to their ultimate victory in the Holy Land. Jingim isn't simply pretty. The tragedy of his life is that he can't have a child. Chabi makes the hard choice to sanction the rape of his wife, so that he will have heirs and she tries to do it without his knowledge. But he surely knows what really happened, and surely it's painful for him to know even if nobody else does. But Jingim knows that he must make peace with who he is, he learned that from his father.  Kublai is under no illusions about who he is: he is aware of both his virtues and his vices, and never wants to avoid the consequences of his choices. He knows that he carries the fate of half the world's people on his shoulders, and that he cannot always control his impulses.  He knows he stole the throne, even if he has earned the right to sit there through his actions. He knows when he meets men who are better than he is.  Men like Yousef, Hundred Eyes, and Jingim. Far from feeling threatened by these men, Kublai appreciates them and knows that they make him a better person. Indeed, Jingim's virtue is a source of hope for Kublai: an antidote to the cynical world of politics that he so often has to live in. Despite all his faults and struggles and crises, Kublai Khan raised a son who could be a better man and a better ruler than he could. Since Kublai Khan is remembered as a great ruler, that's saying something.

If this show has a hero, then surely it is Yousef. At first blush, it seems like he is the stock Evil Vizier character. But like I said before, the best thing about TV is it's episodic nature. Yousef is first presented as an antagonist because Marco is working for Ahmad, who is Yousef's rival. It basically boils down to Yousef having zero tolerance for bullshit, and Ahmad being a walking pile of it.  But, then the perspective shifts when Marco finds Yousef's house. Yousef is the Khan's lieutenant, his right hand man: and when Jingim was younger, the designated regent. It's expected for a man in his position to use that position as a way to enrich himself. Yousef has not done so, his house is bare and he wears his shift (underwear) at home. His court clothes, it turns out, are his only clothes. For a man in his position this is beyond restrained: it's ascetic. But in the end, we can see that Yousef is not doing this simply for himself. His interest is in influencing other people to good behavior: and it works. He knows that everyone around him, including Kublai Khan, views him with awe. Then he manages to upstage himself. Marco reported false information to the Khan, which got men killed at the first siege of Chongqing: the city that Jia Sidao controls. Marco didn't know the information was false, but the people are demanding vengeance: so Marco is condemned. At the last moment, he thinks of a way to earn his redemption: giving the Khan schematics for a wall-destroying siege engine called a trebuchet. A normal catapult can't destroy a wall: it can't throw the stones hard enough or far enough. But a trebuchet uses spin to throw heavy objects faster and farther: so far out that it can't be hit reliably by archers, or even by a typical ballista. They're harder to make, more finicky to use, and crucially in this scenario: useless against personnel. They are not accurate enough to target even large groups of soldiers with any reliability, so they are useless for defense unless the attackers have built structures.  Still, someone must pay for the lives of the soldiers. Yousef sent Marco on the mission, but the Khan doesn't want to punish him. However, Yousef forces his hand by writing his own confession. This act of sacrifice is a message both to Kublai and to Marco. Yousef says to Kublai, that he should never let anyone avoid the consequences of their actions no matter how great they are or how dire the consequences. Yousef says to Marco, that no one is going to abandon him as long as he sticks with the Khan. You see, that's the thing about Marco that Kaidu and Ahmad and Jingim didn't understand: but which Kublai and Yousef did. Marco doesn't care whether people like him or whether they are good: he only cares that they don't abandon him. He's willing to protect, serve and care for people who have hurt him: so long as they don't abandon him.

Marco demonstrates this further by saving Jingim's life at the second Siege of Chongqing, without having been asked to. Jingim and Marco didn't exactly hit it off. Marco's honesty hurt Jingim's pride: and the Prince had it out for him for a while. But then, as he lay with arrows in his body among his men, Jingim heard an accented voice cry "Get to the Prince!" He was surrounded by shields, and lifted up while Marco and Byamba led some men in pushing the defenders back.  They were outnumbered, but the fight was personal to Marco in a way it hadn't been before. He'd only been fighting the Chinese before because he was told to, he couldn't care less about them. But now, he was fighting for his life: because if this siege of Chongqing failed then he would surely be executed. Better to die on the field. A man with nothing to lose is the most lethal kind of man: as military commanders, detectives and terrorists have always known. Marco Polo, at the second Siege of Chongqing, was a man with nothing to lose. Marco and Byamba push the attackers all the way back to the palace, with the rest of the Khan's men streaming in behind them. The Chinese fight well, but they're no match for the enraged Mongols. Finally, Jia Sidao is cornered but he too fights to the bitter end. The show gives Jia his well earned poetic justice, by having Hundred Eyes beat him at Grasshopper kung fu. Hundred Eyes being the ironically named blind Shaolin monk, whom the Khan keeps enslaved by threatening to destroy all of the Shaolin manuscripts if he leaves or disobeys.  The show is pretty unashamed of it's love for kung fu choreography, although it keeps the physics-defying stunts to a minimum.
The Siege was successful, and Marco doesn't just earn back his place as the Khan's agent. He gains the friendship of Prince Jingim as well. But most importantly he demonstrates his best quality: his willingness to help people who have hurt him. Marco is no saint, and does not think he is: but he does have this particular Christian virtue, even if there was a mundane reason why he has it.  This is something Kublai and the Mongols have never seen before, it's not something their culture encourages or teaches: but they understand that it's something to admire and try to replicate.
Ahmad is the perfect foil to Marco, because Ahmad parodies this trait. Ahmad appears to be gracious, easily helping people who have hurt him and being kind to people who have tried to be mean to him. But underneath the controlled exterior which has fooled everyone, Ahmad is seething. He's furious, so much so that he has dissociated: until the day when his real identity and the one that the Khan constructed for him collide. It happens when he unwittingly has sex with his mother. She has become a prostitute, the only way for a woman alone to support herself in those days, and he happens to encounter her in a brothel. The realization that he slept with his mother is too horrific, he goes into a psychotic rage and kills all the women including her. And then the rage calms, but the psychosis doesn't.

Yet, Ahmad has a good heart: he doesn't like the violence he is now capable of, the killer he has become. It's the ultimate recipe for making a killing machine: take a boy and strip him from his family, pamper him like a pet but never treat him as an equal. It's what the Ottomans did to the Janissaries, and before them the Persians did to the Immortals. Only Kublai Khan accidentally pointed the weapon he'd created at his own heart. Ahmad's internal conflict fuels his fetish: he wants to be tied up so he can be sure he won't hurt anyone, he wants to be dominated so as to be reassured that there isn't anything wrong with his dark desires. His masochism only enables his ruse, indeed it's the only way such a thing could work. When the Khan compliments him and gives him gifts, Ahmad reacts with genuine happiness. But the problem with reactions is that you can't actually tell what the person is reacting too: just whether or not it's genuine. Ahmad isn't lying, he is truly happy: he's just taking perverse pleasure in being humiliated and dominated rather than reacting out of true love. Ahmad can be patient in conditions that would have broken other peoples' resolve, because he isn't in constant pain. But he is furious and vengeful. The one thing Kublai does not understand about himself is that his love for Ahmad is born out of guilt for what he did to the people he conquered. Raising Ahmad is a way for Kublai to rationalize his Imperial ambitions in a paternalistic way, to see himself as bringing the light of civilization to other lands.

There is a lot to be said for the hybrid Mongol-Chinese culture that has grown up at the court in Cambulak: but the merits of this culture do not inherently justify imperialism. People should choose to take it on, not have it forced upon them. Kublai does genuinely love Ahmad, but his failure is in understanding that Ahmad can never reciprocate his love. Ahmad nearly tears apart the society that Kublai has worked so hard to build up. He made one simple mistake, and that was enough. He believed Mei Lin loyal to him, he believed she hated the Khan and was loyal to the Song Emperor. She wasn't. She only wanted her daughter. Mei Lin ended up helping to kill Ahmad: ah, excuse me, Jia Meilin, sister of Jia Sidao.

The show doesn't need to demonize Ahmad in order to tell this story, nor does it need to demonize the Jias. It doesn't even need to demonize Prince Nyan: the reformed pedophile brother of Kublai.  Prince Nyan and Ahmad are good men who have desires they don't like: they deal with these things in different ways. In many ways Nyan illustrates precisely what is wrong with Ahmad: he does not have any way to release his true feelings. Nyan's method is gruesome, but on both a physical and emotional level highly effective: he stabs his own hands, mimicking the Stigmata or wounds of Christ. Yep, he's Christian: having converted after being confronted with the damage his behavior was causing. His self-torture would in fact be effective at restraining his desires, and perhaps even works as a kind of Pavlovian conditioning (although this type of conditioning has only limited effectiveness in organisms of human-level intelligence). When you experience pain the brain releases cortisol, which counteracts any dopamine that might happen to be in your system. This stimulates the fight or flight response, which shuts down the sexual response really quickly. Because Nyan does this every time he feels the desire to molest a child, his brain would soon begin to associate the pain with the desire. This would be effective at restraining him from acting on the desire, and indeed he would probably react violently to the suggestion that he should act on it. But, the desire is only repressed, not vanished. Dogs can't repress their desires: they're incapable of lying about how they feel. But humans can repress their desires: they can act in a way that opposes how they feel sometimes without anyone being able to realize that.

Which brings me (I know, finally) back to Marco. When Marco kills the wolf that is about to rip Kublai's throat out, he's doing something he has every reason not to do. When he stabs Kaidu, Marco is doing something he has every reason not to do. When Marco saves Jingim, he's doing something he has ever reason not to do. But Marco knows that in each case he's doing the right thing. Or, as Kublai says, "the hard thing". This is Kublai's greatest strength as a ruler.  He's willing to do whatever is the right thing, regardless of how personally painful for him in might be. But for him, this is something learned: a duty that he is bound to because he is the Khan. For Marco, it's natural: Marco doesn't care if the people around him are morally good, he doesn't care if those people even like him. All he cares about is that they won't abandon him: because that's the one thing he can't stand the thought of. Marco needs a society, a community, and he'll do anything or overlook anything to get it. He'll brand his own father, stand by as his friend is hacked to pieces, fight to protect a man he doesn't like, betray a woman he loves, build a machine to destroy a city, rat out his mentor, etc. Kublai just by being Khan offers Marco what he needs: a supportive authority figure, a father figure. There's a reason we call kings "Sire", and it's because they're supposed to act this way towards their country.

Of course, it doesn't always happen that way: and that's the key problem with monarchy as a system of governance. It's not because all kings are bad but because nobody has the power to stop a bad one. Empire isn't bad because all Emperors are bad: but because Empire-building destroys people's lives and puts cultures at risk. The most benevolent and enlightened rulers in the world can't change that. There is no need to spin a false narrative that all absolute rulers are evil in order to criticize the idea of monarchy. There is no need to demonize every conqueror in order to criticize the idea of conquest, every emperor in order to criticize the idea of Empire.

Tormund Giantsbane: the Purpose of the Fool

*Warning, a lot of crude language and mental images you don't need ahead*

Tormund Giantsbane is hilarious. He's so funny, it can be hard to see him as anything other than just the comic relief. He does play that role, especially in the rag-tag band that Jon Snow assembles to go north of The Wall in season 7 of Game of the Thrones. But Tormund is more than just the guy with the great jokes, and that stupid story about fucking a bear. Yes, he is that one character who constantly talks about penises that seems to be obligatory for HBO shows (at least since Spartacus, and Gannicus saying the word "cock" in every sentence).  Tormund has more colorful words for the male genitalia, but almost everything that comes out of his mouth has something to do with sex. Not just jokes either, even in his more serious moments he's more often than not talking about sex: either giving advice to Jon Snow, or moaning about how Brienne won't notice him. But he isn't just a nymphomaniac: he doesn't have the nihilistic worldview.  In fact, Tormund is the antidote to the depressing and cynical world he inhabits: and his seeming obsession with sex is part of that. He doesn't talk about sex the way that other men in Game of Thrones talk about sex. Even the "good" characters like Ned Stark talk about sex more often than not as a type of conquest: a way of asserting one's will over someone else.  Most of the female characters talk about sex this way too, and experience it this way.

The negative and positive sides of this are explored in the characters of Sansa Stark and Margaery Tyrell. Sansa is on the receiving end of sex as conquest, not once but twice: strongly shaping her view of sexuality and marriage. She becomes frigid because she has been hurt, closing herself off from others. This even extends to people who can't be sex partners, including her sister Arya. Margaery Tyrell is on the perpetrating end.  She uses sex as conquest to control Thommen Baratheon, getting him to idolize her by objectifying and coddling him. This is a problem ultimately, because when he is confronted with real responsibility he simply can't deal with it.

Even Danaerys was brought up thinking this way about sex, and all on her own discovered a different attitude towards sexuality. This is why the relationship with Daario Naharis is important to her character arc: he shows her the world of affirmative sexuality, completing her recovery from the trauma inflicted by her brother. 

Jon is similarly hung up about his sexuality, because he believes he is a bastard. He is too genuinely kind to want to bring a child into the world who is going to suffer the way he has suffered.  The only way he could express his sexuality was among the wildlings, where if Ygritte had a child by him then s/he would be treated the same as any other. At least, until his death and rebirth.  At this point, his old identity as Eddard Stark's supposed bastard son is stripped away. He is simply Jon: not a bastard, not a brother of the Night's Watch, but a man. A man who can be a King. As the only (at that time known) surviving male in the Stark family, he is named King in the North: a position he could not have held if he were a bastard or a brother of the Watch. But these old positions in society have ceased to have meaning: because Jon has awoken to a broken world. Now Jon can begin to think of sex in a new light: not as a way of exerting control over someone, but as yet another way of helping others. Tormund is there to show him how that is accomplished.

You see, the reason why Tormund makes jokes is because Tormund wants to make people laugh. I know, I know, that sounds extremely obvious but if you think about it that makes him something almost miraculous in the world of GoT.  Tormund, is a nice person.  He just wants to make people smile. He's untouched by the Machiavellian machinations of the other characters. He has a nose for bullshit, and doesn't touch it with a ten foot pole. He doesn't care about his own advancement: he just wants people to be safe and laughing. Of course, this does actually get him advanced: to lead a band of wildlings. The way in which Tormund's way of talking about sex is different from the other characters is highlighted by the way he becomes the leader of that wildling band. Rattleshirt, like most of the men in this world, thinks of sex as conquest. He insinuates that Tormund plays the submissive role in sex with Jon i.e. that Jon has conquered Tormund. But let us contrast this moment with another before we examine Tormund's reaction. Sandor Clegane much later on insinuates that Tormund would submit to him in sex. In that case, Tormund reacts by misdirecting the conversation: he shows no sign of being offended, if anything he almost sounds interested (like I said, mental images you don't need).  In the case of Rattleshirt however, Tormund goes ballistic and kills the guy. Why? because Rattleshirt is insinuating that Jon would enjoy dominating another man. This is an insult to Jon, a man so altruistic he's willing to die repeatedly for others. Tormund knows if he doesn't stand up for Jon, then no one will.

For all that Tormund talks about sex constantly, he doesn't actually do any.  That isn't the point though. While everyone else is talking about death: Tormund is talking about life. Everyone else is unhappy, cynical and depressed: but Tormund is focusing on living, on finding joy in life and bringing that to others. He understands that it is especially now, as the long cold and dark winter full of horrors begins, that people like him are needed most. People kissed by fire, with red hair and sunny spirits. There's an even deeper layer to it as well. Sex is honest, you have to get naked to do it. You can't lie about who or what you are, to someone you're having sex with. Tormund talks about sex to show he's being honest: and to get others to be honest with him. It's a way to cut through the bullshit to find out who someone really is. Tormund understands something crucial that many people in this world don't seem to: flattery isn't complimentary, it's denigrating. Lying to someone about how good they are, or what they are capable of is an insult to that person. It's telling them that you think they are stupid enough to swallow your lie. When people start to deify Jon, Tormund quietly cuts through that: with a dick joke of course. This isn't just because it's Tormund's signature style. It's because joking about his penis reminds everyone that he has one: i.e. that he is a man. In fact it reminds everyone that the best and most wonderful thing about Jon, is that he is a man: not some theoretical divine being who cannot be truly known.

Of course, Tormund understands why people deify Jon. This is a world where men, especially men with power, routinely sacrifice others for their own self-interest. Here is Jon, who has already sacrificed himself for others and is willing to do so again. This is outside their understanding and expectations. But what Tormund is saying, is that Jon can be understood. He has motivations for doing what he does, which any of them could understand and relate to. Understand, relate to, and copy. People love and revere Jon because of his passionate commitment to serving others. But Tormund knows they could go beyond simply obeying his commands, bending the knee, or treating him with reverence. They could try to be more like him. They could try to put aside their selfish concerns, and see the larger picture. See the dangers posed by the oncoming winter and how they could use their resources to help more people than just their immediate family. Tormund isn't just lightening a tense and awkward moment, or saving Jon from embarrassment, he's making a radical statement about human nature. That's one deep dick joke right there.

Tirion Fordring-Writing Neutral Characters

World of Warcraft is a game defined by factions with different philosophies, and various reasons for existing. It is a world in constant turmoil, with different people all struggling to get what they want or need. There are the two player factions, the Horde and the Alliance. There are others too. There was one character who was almost universally revered by all living things. He wasn't some kind of superhero, or all-powerful overlord. He was a simple old man. Tirion Fordring.

Well, perhaps not so simple. Tirion was a man, committed first and foremost to principles. His principles were hardly unusual, they were the standard teachings of the Church of the Light (a fictional religion followed by the humans in Warcraft).  He was a paladin, a warrior of the church, so this makes sense. But the Church was a part of human society, and human society was firmly connected to the Alliance. It was the humans after all who had first been threatened by the invading orcs.  Indeed it was in the wars against the orcs that the first human paladins came to be. But in the aftermath of the two wars against the orcs, a decision was made that did not sit well with some in the church. The defeated orcs were put into internment camps, which later devolved into outright slavery. The humans were increasingly brutal and savage to their captives. Tirion was one of those who was dissatisfied. When he saw an orc named Eitrigg who was about to be executed for participating in a rebellion, he intervened and saved the orc's life: risking his own. Lord Uther, the leader of the paladin order, ostracized him and conducted a ritual to try to cut him off from the Light. The Alliance leaders also considered his actions criminal. Tirion fled his manor, Mardenholde, and barely escaped with his life. He hid in the mountains south of Quel'thalas, perhaps with the help of the elves or the trolls, for many years.

Even though this area was dangerous, he braved it: so he could be near his son Thaelan. As he watched Thaelan however, he began to realize something was wrong with the Scarlet Crusade: an Alliance organization founded amid the third war (the events of Warcraft III) of which Thaelan was a high-ranking member. In particular he began to notice that there was something disturbing about the relationship between Thaelan and his superior in the organization: High Inquisitor Isilien. Isilien seemed to increasingly control Thaelan, and was forcing him to commit acts that were increasingly brutal. Eventually he learned that the Argent Dawn had hired a team of adventurers (the players of World of Warcraft), to help them deal with the Scourge forces that remained in what was now called the Plaguelands. He left clues to where he was hiding, hoping one of them would find him. It was time to confront Isilien and find out what was really going on in the Scarlet Crusade. One of the adventurers found him, and agreed to go with him to confront High Inquisitor Isilien.  They confronted the Inquisitor and Thaelan at a tower near Mardenholde. In the ensuing argument, Thaelan started to rebel against Isilien. Rather than see Thaelan be turned against him, Isilien pushed him from the tower killing him.  Tirion went into a rage and killed Isilien. In his rage, he reconnected to the Light despite Lord Uther's ritual.

The Scarlet Crusade had enemies: and taking out the High Inquisitor was a blow to them. Darion Mograine, leader of the Argent Dawn, was one enemy of the Scarlet Crusade.  He had once been a high-ranking member of the organization himself: in fact at the very highest rank. His father, Alexandros Mograine, was the founder. But Darion, because he was so close to the top, had seen what was wrong much more easily. He had seen it take hold of his own brother and lead him to betraying their father. It was evil, insidious, and not from the world of Azeroth: it was the Legion. The Legion which had created the Scourge: the enemy that the Scarlet Crusade had been created to fight. Now Tirion and Darion were kindred spirits: having both lost loved ones to the evil that was eating the Crusade. Somehow Darion found Lord Uther's armor, and now he gave it to Tirion as a way to show that all was forgiven. Darion was subsequently killed.

In his absence, Tirion was the obvious choice to lead the Argent Dawn. In the mean time, the elves of Quel'thalas had joined the Horde: having been insulted and abandoned in their time of need by the Alliance. Many elves had been members of the Argent Dawn before this decision, and Tirion decided to let them stay. But more than that, members of the Scourge were starting to free themselves from the Lich King's control: and they had banded together as the Forsaken, and also joined the Horde because the Alliance wanted to kill them all. Some of these were priests, and they learned how to wield the Light despite their undead state. These were people that Tirion and the others had known in life: who were committed to fighting the Scourge now more than ever thanks to their treatment at the Lich King's hands. Tirion made the controversial choice to let them into the Argent Dawn. The Argent Dawn was no longer an Alliance organization. Furthermore, even the most distrustful among them could see the point in working with the Horde as well as the Alliance to take down the Lich King.  After all, the Horde had reason to hate the Lich King as well. Tirion signed a pact with the leaders of the Horde recognizing the Forsaken's right to the land. He promised he would not aid Alliance forces that were attempting to claim the area. This made sense, the Forsaken were citizens of the former Lordaeron just like Tirion was. It was in his interest to recognize their right to the land so that they would recognize his right to Mardenholde. Which they did. With that however, Tirion had made the Argent Dawn officially a neutral player on the political stage. Darion Mograine had hired mercenaries regardless of race: but Tirion would accept full members from both factions. He later renamed the group to the "Argent Crusade".

Thus the stage was set for Tirion to take a peculiar place in the Warcraft story: a place set above the faction conflict, and blurring the line between character and force of nature. You see, Darion was killed, but death in Warcraft is not always the end of a person's story.  Under the control of the Lich King, Darion Mograine assaulted the last stronghold of the Argent Dawn: Light's Hope Chapel. However, having become a paladin after the end of the Third War: Darion lacked essential knowledge of this place. It was here that the Paladins of the Silver Hand had once been invested, before an ancient artifact. It was this artifact, called the Altar of Ancient Kings, which had so far kept the Scourge at bay. Now, the Death Knights of the Ebon Blade, tried to assault it. They failed. The weapon that Darion wielded, the Ashbringer, responded to the power inside the Altar. It turned on him, and without it he could not fight well. He halted the assault, and knelt before Tirion. An image of the Lich King appeared, to cast a very real spell that might have ended it all. However, the Lich King was distracted and in that moment of distraction: Darion was free to act completely on his own. He seized his chance and threw the Ashbringer to Tirion. Tirion channeled the power of the Altar through his body and into the blade: purifying it and making it a weapon of the Light. This was a feat which had been thought impossible, the Altar was not designed to be used by humans or even elves. It had been designed for the Titanforged, the creatures created from stone and metal by the Titans.  But in a crucial way, Tirion had become like them: his motives were pure, and his will was iron. Tirion had no wish to destroy Darion, they were friends and kindred spirits. Darion had valuable skills and knowledge, passed down to him by his father. It was hardly his fault he'd been pressed into the service of the Scourge. The powers of the death knights were valuable too, Tirion had fought against them in the First and Second wars. So, when Darion declared his intention to destroy the Lich King, Tirion accepted him as a partner.

The assault on the Lich King took place soon after. Here Tirion played a crucial role: breaking Frostmourne with the purified Ashbringer. And so, it was done. The Lich King was defeated, and the Scourge destroyed. But there was no turning back for Tirion. He could not simply return to the Alliance, as if nothing had happened. Now he stood between two factions on the brink of war, between two leaders whose hearts boiled with hatred for each other.

And in this position, Tirion could exert a unique power on both the Alliance and the Horde. He represented a constant reminder of what the two factions shared: even after the defeat of their common enemy. Not enough of an influence to stop the two factions from going to war, or even to stop atrocities from being committed in that war. But enough of an influence so that the factions could make peace when the need arose.  So that, for the first time in Azeroth's history, a war criminal could be tried in court rather than simply hunted down and slaughtered. So that the cycle of reprisal and aggression could be ended, even if it was doomed to begin anew immediately. Tirion didn't have to do anything in particular to make this happen, except continue to be present and run the Argent Crusade. This was not the first neutral faction: indeed there were many in the world. But none of them were lead by someone so revered by the leaders of both factions. Tirion exerted this influence because of his dedication to his own principles above loyalty to any faction or nation: changing the world not by using force or strong language, but simply by refusing to change his behavior to fit popular notions of propriety. We typically think of neutral characters as being weak-willed or uninterested, perhaps mercenary types. But Tirion represents a different kind of neutral character, a kind of character who can have a profound influence on the plot of a story: a character who is principled and engaged with the world in a meaningful way, but marching to the beat of a different drummer.