u/ProtoLimbPosting

As an amateur mortician, I couldn't help but notice a lot of vampires have pretty intense daddy issues. Either you're desperately trying to impress wizened elders or you're joining a political movement just to spite them. So I'm curious: what exactly was your upbringing like? Did your sire act like a decent parental figure or were they just another petty-tyrant with fangs? Asking for the Garou Nation. Bonus points if you explain what your "embrace" was like.

I think it's not much of a stretch to say that Enid's inability to "wolf out" easily made her all the more compelling--she's an outcast among outcasts, just like Wednesday, yet still manages to stay upbeat for the most part. It was also good character writing since it gave her an actual limitation to work around and force her to contribute in ways other than going giant murder-wolf. I could easily imagine a version of the show where Enid never quite masters lycanthropy and is forced to figure out what she specifically is good at or how to best utilize partial transformations. Instead the reveal that she was a super special alpha all along retroactively cheapens her character a little. There's no longer any questions about her place in werewolf society and her insecurities, she's an anime protagonist who cannot control her overwhelming power. Enid should be strong, she is a werewolf at the end of the day. But the introduction of alphas seems like it was the worst way to go about giving her character growth.

It doesn't matter how many times Romus personally intervenes to protect working class interests, if he refuses to democratize he gets **zero** support from workers. There isn't really a rational explanation for this. Certain ideologically committed sections of the working class will hate an autocratically inclined Romus no matter what. But those people constitute a minority in pretty much every country. From the perspective of the average joe, if the head of state personally and persistently intervened to pass legislation in their favor they would view them as being on their side, especially if they previously felt powerless. Instead the game just operates on a binary where democracy is the hard-coded worker route and autocracy is the hard-coded elite route. This has been an issue since launch so I do not see this ever getting addressed at this point. It's just very disappointing the game is so railroady when it's ostensibly supposed to offer more player choice compared to the base game. In fact base game Rayne can get 50% socialist support if he's pro-worker but autocratic and represses Bluds. That's way more realistic than what we get in Rizia.

The recent Red Lotus Prequel leak just further corroborates what was already shown in Legend of Korra, namely that the organization's anarchism only applies to human institutions. For all his talk of unjustified hierarchy Zaheer and his crew never once question the spiritual hierarchy of the setting. They take for an absolute given that the pre-Avatar Wan order was more "authentic" or desirable despite the fact that it was a world where spirits tyrannized humans. So ultimately the Red Lotus is trapped in the same metaphysical straitjacket as everyone else in the setting--they spend their time arguing about which version of "balance" is correct rather than examining whether or not spirits should have any authority in the first place. Their "radicalism" is just a purity spiral over who gets to interpret cosmic will. The only character who rejects the script entirely is Admiral Zhao, the Prometheus of the Avatarverse. He gave humanity the industrial revolution, looked at the spiritual order and said "no" and was condemned to an eternity in the Fog of Lost Souls for caring more about progress than metaphysics. For a brief, shining moment, Admiral Zhao was the only spirit that matters, the World Spirit astride an Ironclad.

Romus has few opportunities to influence the line of succession despite being king--he's either stuck with Vina (which practically ensures the weakening of monarchical powers upon his death) or he has to father a child with Lucita (which comes with its own set of baggage on top of being a little opaque in terms of mechanics). Hubertus seems like the perfect compromise heir--a male Toras with seemingly no strong political opinions other than environmental conservation. Him being Claudius-like figure who's suddenly given power despite not really angling for it would be a great fit for such an underused character.

Want the AN to acknowledge the literal text of a maritime treaty that benefits everyone with small islands? I hope you didnt mildly irritate Derdia--they're the key to all this.

Want to sign an edict Hugo doesn't like? You can't lock him out of your office or shut him down from the get go, you must listen to his Sir Humphrey impression.

Want to avoid the war entirely and buy gas rights from Axel? You will let him send the drillship to the disputed gasfield and you will let him accuse you of aggression later on.

Want to groom an heir who believes in unshakable autocracy? Vina will be a liberal and she will fawn after Manus. No, you cannot punish her in any way.

Want to be a state capitalist autocrat? You will be accused of being a communist for...passing affordable housing bills, supporting Morella and the worker's safety act. Also none of the workers form a positive opinion of you for doing these things unless you're a liberal.

The list goes on and on. And before anyone accuses me of wanting a power fantasy or missing the point, Rayne has 10× the agency Romus does despite being an elected official. As an autocrat Romus should be able to bully people. Maybe bullying the wrong people would eventually provoke a coup against him. Maybe disowning Vina would cause a sucession crisis. That's okay. But he currently doesnt even have the option to do so.

None of the centralize-power edits in Rizia are satisfying since Romus ultimately does not believe in unshakable autocracy. For example, when Manus confronts him about democracy all the dialogue options are essentially defensive in nature--Romus can't deny or denigrate the legitimacy of democracy or liberalism at all.

I know plenty of people will probably leap down my throat and claim that's the point--Rizia is in a weakened position and Romus needs to appease a selectorate. But I don't see how that forecloses Romus being a Caligula type figure who makes everyone sweat in their suits for a few brief, glorious years (or perhaps longer, Nur willing) rather than someone who has to patiently listen to everyone.

At its foundation, Zaheer's worldview echoes Heraclitus--the universe exists in a constant state of flux, and conflict between opposites is the engine of reality. Human authority is therefore not merely unjust; it is metaphysically illegitimate, because it seeks to deny the bloody womb from which it emerged--conflict. If this is where Zaheer's philosophy ended, he would be remarkably coherent in his opposition to the Avatar as an unaccountable cosmic authority figure.

Yet despite knowing of Unalaq's plans and the cosmology surrounding Vaatu, Zaheer never treats the prospect of spirits reclaiming the mortal world as a form of domination. He instead interprets it as a desirable restoration of nature's proper balance. There is a hidden premise smuggled in from the white lotus here--the notion that the spirit world possesses intrinsic legitimacy unavailable to the human civilization. So without realizing it, Zaheer is working to construct the exact sort cosmic hierarchy envisioned by Korra and the White Lotus. A society configured around the diktats of mercurial, inscrutable spirits. His disagreement with Korra ultimately boils down to which spiritual order should govern, not whether spirits constitute a legitimacy source of authority.

So philosophically, Admiral Zhao is more radical than Zaheer. Zaheer merely transfers authority from despots to spirits. Zhao denies that spirit possess any sovereignty at all and treats them like strategic assets. So while the Fire Nation and Zhao might have failed politically, their historical mission in spreading the industrial revolution, scientific inquiry and human mastery over nature succeeded. For a brief, shining moment, Admiral Zhao was the World Spirit astride an Ironclad.

Banned from posting this on the official Hazbin sub so I figured I may as well drop it here. Hazbin Hotel is generally allergic to philosophical stakes but given the fact that it got green-lit for 5 seasons I think it's worth examining why exactly it's broken in terms of its ostensible central premise--redemption.

Heaven essentially has a limited view of salvation in the show--some people are saved and the others "boil in the pot" for their sins. It's a harsh worldview that is ostensibly bad because it is oppressive and ignores real suffering in favor of being "black and white".

Charlie's innovation is to democratize heaven's admission policy by claiming anyone who sincerely attends enough gothic-themed therapy sessions can achieve salvation by their own merits. There's a name for this belief--it's called Pelagianism and it was condemned as a heresy by Saint Augustine because it's crueler than it looks. If salvation is purely a matter of effort and sincerity, then anyone who fails has nobody to blame but themselves. So here's the trap Charlie built for herself: if something like Pelagianism is true and sinners can redeem themselves through effort alone, then those who haven't just weren't trying hard enough. And if that's the case the Extermination is really just quality control--anyone still stuck in hell when it rolls around objectively failed to meet the grading curve and is being justly punished.

Now I'm sure many Hazbin fans would counter that the show raises a lot of questions that aren't answered yet and that we don't know the actual mechanics of redemption. Fair enough. But the show has spent two seasons treating redemption as a foregone conclusion while deliberately avoiding any questions that would make the premise interesting. Charlie herself is extremely reactive to the point where she tries to give the literal dictionary definition of redemption when pressed on the subject on top of the fact that her primary motivation for the hotel to make her mother proud. I see no reason to believe that Hazbin Hotel will abruptly change course and start treating redemption as something more than just a vibe.

Chancellor Hegel, the Arcasian agent in Haelm, outright denies that socialism means a democratically administered centrally planned economy. Instead he claims that the fragmentation of socialist state property into property of individual groups of workers, so called "enterprise self-management" is the true road to socialism.

But what is "self-management" in reality? It is nothing more than the old bourgeois principles of competition and so-called market discipline dressed in red paint. Each enterprise is encouraged to pursue its own narrow interests, to bargain against the interests of of other enterprises, to behave as petty proprietors. In short, they are encouraged to behave like capitalists.

Yet the responsibility for this revisionist degeneration does not rest upon Chancellor Hegel alone. The greater guilt belongs to those who, while claiming fidelity to the teachings of Karlos Marcia, tolerate and even celebrate these deviations in the name of "pragmatism" or "anti-imperialist unity."

I am speaking of course of Leon Malenyev, who remains conspicuously silent as the Haelmic revisonists dismantle socialist planning piece by piece. He calls it the "Valgslandian Socialism". In reality it is a complete and utter capitulation to bourgeois economics.

Criticize Malenyev and counterattack the Right-Deviationist Reversal-of-Verdicts Trend!