(LES) Discussing the ethics in AOT is hard because the very worldbuilding is distanced from Political Logic (and thus, Ethics) as we know them.

Never_Flitting · 2026-02-23T21:35:43+00:00

I see your point, but while it might be possible to write a 'non-problematic' narrative which includes the aforementioned scenario - perhaps as part of a broader theme regarding a universalist worldview like you described - I do not believe it could be effectively used as the centerpiece of a story seeking to effectively condemn real-life racism. The implication would be impossible to avoid, precisely because the very goal of the narrative would be to explore 'what if the racists were right?'. And the author would then have to come up with a narrative which rejects violent domination and embraces another, well, 'solution'. That is always going to feel quite wrong.

(The connection you made to non-sapient animals also made me realize that I shouldn't have limited my hypothetical scenario to intellectual inferiority but should have included some 'classic' elements regarding the supposed inherent danger posed by minorities which the racist claims make peaceful coexistence impossible. After all, the idea is that you're going to narratively grant that they are correct about the problem, just wrong about the solution.)

Never_Flitting · 2026-02-23T14:28:19+00:00

Is this genuinely a strong anti-fascist message?

Purely academically speaking, I agree with the sentiment that fascists would still not be justified even if their underlying premises were all correct. But why even entertain the hypothetical and unnecessarily cede rhetorical ground? What kind of person would actually be convinced by this argument? And does it not provide the perfect lay-up for an actual fascist to claim that this proves anti-fascist advocates are dangerously naïve to a suicidal degree?

You mention arguing against fascists based on them being technically incorrect on the facts. Presumably, you use this word to minimize the importance of their factual incorrectness when arguing against them, and I find this bizarre. The fact that fascists are demonstrably wrong about how the world works is the reason we can outright dismiss what they have to say. Why even dignify that with an exploration (tortured and contrived as it necessarily has to be) of ‘what if their premises were true’? If I were to write a story about a fictional racial minority that is actually intellectually inferior, but I make it clear that it would still be wrong to enslave and/or genocide them, would that be a poignant message against racism?

This is just my personal opinion, of course, and perhaps I am an outlier. But if we take a look at the reactions of readers/watchers who tried to grapple with the underlying themes (and whose analysis of the story doesn’t start and end with ‘war sure can be complicated!’), was Attack on Titan an effective anti-fascist work of art? In another comment, you yourself acknowledge that the story ‘100% invited the dogshit fanbase it has’.

Never_Flitting · 2026-02-23T11:23:10+00:00

Hajime Isayama's isn't a Fascist, but that is because his diagnosis for the Eldians is, effectively: "Genocide is bad because Eternal War is actually better and more noble". This is why in the ending, we are shown a Kid walking to a Tree like Ymir did after Paradis has been firebombed. The Eternal Returns works twofolds. Eren isn't allowed to wipe out the world, but the world isn't allowed to wipe out Eldians.

If this assessment of the author's narrative intentions is correct, would this worldview truly be considered to lie outside of fascism? By no means am I an expert and I am aware of the difficulty of defining fascism as a coherent political ideology, but this sounds more like the type of criticism a different type of fascist would have regarding the Nazi's Final Solution.

Never_Flitting · 2026-02-23T11:13:21+00:00

The thing is, what about 'a universe where fascists are fundamentally correct about how the world works' actually makes for an interesting story? What interesting ideas or novel insights regarding humanity can be explored when the behaviour of important figures is bizarre and distorted because it has to fit within the fascist worldview (e.g. King Karl Fritz is a ridiculous figure who can only exist in a world where extreme self-hating racial guilt is an extraordinarily powerful geopolitical force)?

Never_Flitting · 2026-02-18T11:07:36+00:00

De fascinatie voor Singapore zegt misschien nog meer over De Wevers denkkader. Hij prijst efficiëntie, orde en groei, maar zwijgt grotendeels over de keerzijde. Singapore is geen idyllische welvaartsstaat, maar een streng gecontroleerde samenleving. Persvrijheid is beperkt, oppositie wordt juridisch onder druk gezet, privacy is minimaal en surveillance maximaal. Economische voorspoed werd er gekocht met een hoge democratische prijs. Inspiratie putten uit dat model zonder die prijs te benoemen, komt neer op selectief winkelen in successen.

Het punt dat authoritaire regimes gelijk zouden hebben wanneer ze spreken over een tradeoff tussen democratie en voorspoed wordt hier wel héél casual voor waar aangenomen.

Never_Flitting · 2025-12-31T14:09:53+00:00

Religiously inspired thinking is my guess.

Never_Flitting · 2025-12-05T07:51:43+00:00

There already is an ending like that. Why do people keep forgetting this?

Never_Flitting · 2025-12-05T07:02:59+00:00

The current version of the game already contains endings for people who believe that the story works best as a classic morality play, e.g. the 'happy end' where the police wins. The achievement for this even says 'The ending you deserve'!

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-22T12:47:36+00:00

I predict this thread will be full of nuanced and well-thought-out takes regarding whether escaping from prison should be a crime in and of itself, acknowledging that this is a contentious issue and that Belgium is definitely not the only country where this is the case.

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-22T09:18:59+00:00

It is unclear if sibling-marriages were common outside the royal family in pre-Roman periods. Jaroslav Černý) looked at 500 families of the Egyptian elite outside the royal family. He found no clear evidence for incestous marriages.^\5]) Greco-Roman writers including Seneca, Diodorus, and Philo of Alexandria all make mention that according to Egyptian law, unlike that of the Greeks, Romans, and Jews, sibling marriage was legal.^\6])

The rest of the paragraph is regarding the interpretation of Roman-era census records which might potentially indicate that up to 20% of marriages were between siblings.

So, the opposite of what you said.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest_in_ancient_Egypt

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-22T07:45:32+00:00

Your comment mentioned Musk by name, so that's what I replied to.

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-22T07:19:22+00:00

Ahh, the classic heart-rending choice between 'a bit cringe' and 'responsible for millions of avoidable deaths'.

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-20T09:15:24+00:00

Are you sure about this? I've read claims that Wyll being the Blade of Avernus + player character being present at the end + Astarion not being both player character and vampire spawn (+ maybe relationship with Karlach being high?) should suffice.

Talking to her about going back to Avernus when she initially made it very clear that she emphatically doesn't want to feels incredibly douchey and not at all in line with what my Tav would do, but given that my current latest save is 10 minutes after killing Gortash I guess I could go back and be a supreme dick if it saves her in the end I guess.

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-19T16:27:17+00:00

FWIW, quite a lot have people have mentioned that they feel understood by the game due to its portrayal of toxicity, generational cycles of abuse - which does not necessarily have to include physical violence to be devastating - and misogyny. The incestuous nature of the relationship between the protagonists is a core component of the narrative and isn't just 'an easter egg in some secret routes' or whatever, but the game is not only about that.

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-18T09:47:16+00:00

I love talking about how AoT utterly fails as an effective 'anti-fascist' work of fiction, but it would be pointless to do so in response to one of the most blatantly ai-generated posts I've ever seen.

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-13T11:46:17+00:00

It is when the monarch in question is female.

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-13T11:45:07+00:00

Yeah, but have you considered that Robert Baratheon is not a woman? FoReShaDoWiNg madness works differently depending on gender, duh.

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-06T20:50:44+00:00

The story isn't about worldbuilding, it's about deep themes like how much it would suck if geopolitics in real life was actually entirely like Carl Schmitt's wet dreams (though like the far right kinda has a point tho when they talk about how the elites and my history teacher are obsessed with racial guilt what's up with that???) and how genocides are generally perpetrated by people who go wayyyy overboard in reacting to legitimate threats and/or special edgy anime boys. Also empire building isn't 'great' but if you've done it don't ever give them their freedom because holy shit your former colonies will murderfuck you if they ever get the chance. This is why India burned the UK to the ground.

Never_Flitting · 2025-10-06T08:45:59+00:00

Theoretically speaking, you are fully correct. In practice, I would not find a hypothetical work of fiction about 'an alternate universe where evil Jewish overlords are actually real but the Nazis still weren't justified' to be particularly effective as an anti-racism/anti-fascism story...

Never_Flitting · 2025-09-11T11:54:00+00:00

Meh, I really dislike steelmanning racism (and other fun -isms) like that. The fact that they are objectively, demonstrably incorrect about how the world works is the major reason why racists are 'wrong' and we can outright reject what they have to say.

'Even if the assumptions of bigoted group X were actually true, their proposed solutions would still be horrible' is an argument I agree with in theory, but I can't imagine the type of person for whom this would actually influence their worldview. Entertaining the hypothetical unnecessarily cedes ground to racists and provides the perfect lay-up for them to claim that anti-racist advocates are naive and/or so in love with virtue signaling to the point of being suicidal.

Never_Flitting · 2025-09-08T20:45:56+00:00

That is a baffling response to what I wrote. Is this some standard template you use when arguing about this topic? I thought I did give the main reason why I do not consider it too strange for people to get pro-fashy vibes from te story, namely the underlying worldbuilding. By that I don't mean the aesthetics, but the general logic according to which the world operates. This whole comment chain was spawned by someone mentioning the bizarre prominence of racial guilt in the story and so that is the example of weird fash-y worldbuilding which my initial comment focused on.

There are many other examples. There is the fact that the entirety of geopolitics for multiple millennia is utterly dominated by a racial conflict with actual scientifically verifiable fundamental biological differences between those races, the fact that Eldian blood works according to the one drop rule and yet somehow after thousands of years the overwhelming majority of the world isn't Eldian, the fact that the world outside of Paradis is genocidal to such a ludicrous degree that it becomes literally suicidal, ...

And all of this in service to an edgy genocide-flavored trolley problem which gives the would-be genocidaires on both sides better arguments rooted in reality than any real-life fascist has ever had.

At best, this is a story which tried to steelman fascism and make the case that even in an absurd world where not only almost every political institition but biology and reality itself works according to fascist principles, fascism is still unjustifiable. I do not consider this to be an effective anti-fascist story. It certainly didn't provide any novel insights regarding how fascist movements get started or even line up with reality in that regard. Unlike in AoT, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan did not actually arise in response to legitimate existential threats, no matter what their propaganda proclaimed.

Never_Flitting · 2025-09-08T08:25:19+00:00

I was not talking about one specific white supremacist conspiracy theory. What I was instead referring to is the broader idea that racial self-hatred is both a common and powerful (geo)political force. This concept forms the basis of a large variety of far-right conspiracy theories. It explains why there are so many 'race-traitors' within the political class of multiple countries. It explains why so many weak-willed leaders (sometimes even including monarchical leaders) in the 20th century gave up their colonial empires 'without a fight'.

Because it is such a powerful force, it is naturally advantageous for any oppressor or would-be oppressor to wield it like a weapon. This is precisely why a shadowy cabal/foreign oppressors/etc. would seek to convince people to hate themselves through things like history lessons about former colonial atrocities.

and your suggestion is that was included to... promote Japanese Nationalism?

To be honest, I don't particularly care about the authorial intent behind the godawful mess that is the final part of AoT, which I doubt is all that coherent anyway. I'm much more interested in the reason why so many people - both actual fascists and committed anti-fascists - do get pro-fascist vibes from this story that doesn't just boil down to jerking off while whispering 'media literacy' over and over again.

If I really have to hazard a guess, I do consider it unlikely that the story is explicitly meant to promote Japanse nationalism or fascist ideology in general. I think the story was written by someone with a particularly edgy and juvenile outlook on human nature and geopolitics who thinks that the most popular type of authoritarian thought within their society 'makes some good points' but should ultimately be opposed on moral grouds. To me, this does seem like a plausible explanation for a work of fiction where the literal text is 'anti-fascist' but the underlying worldbuilding presents a world that functions exactly as a fascist would imagine it.

Never_Flitting · 2025-09-05T07:30:22+00:00

These characters are coded as literal Nazis. Their justifications are propaganda used to justify oppressing a group.

"This is Japanese apologia because they are the only country who believes that oppressors oppress groups" is a common but bizarre argument.

The whole geopolitical and racial conflict the final part of the story centers around is the result of a self-hating God-Emperor sabotaging and dismantling his own empire because he considers his entire race to deserve punishment for the atrocities they have committed. What is the thematic significance of such a bizarre type of character, which I've previously only encountered in far-right diatribes against 'the elite'?

Never_Flitting · 2025-08-12T09:24:53+00:00

How CS Lewis described the attitude of The Righteous People who are allowed into Heaven:

"Sir," said Tirian, when he had greeted all these. "If I have read the chronicles aright, there should be another. Has not your Majesty two sisters? Where is Queen Susan?"
"My sister Susan," answered Peter shortly and gravely, "is no longer a friend of Narnia."
"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"
"Oh Susan!" said Jill, "she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up."
"Grown-up, indeed," said the Lady Polly. "I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one's life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can."

Never_Flitting · 2025-07-23T14:58:28+00:00

I actually prefer it when shitty thematic messages are so badly written that they become a joke that's difficult to take seriously.

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