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ThisIsSin

Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature

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joined 2022 September 06 05:37:32 UTC 

				
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ThisIsSin


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Derive the current state of affairs from a frictionless spherical state of nature

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 06 05:37:32 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Its only residents of third world shitholes who insist on flying their flag as a mark of conquest on territories they conquer.




Oh no, lots of First Worlders do this too; that's why they treat people removing or burning their "progress" flag as a war crime.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


necessitating an extended adolescence




It wasn't necessary, but this failure is 100% on the traditionalists.  You can see the echoes in "but no daughter of mine will be dating at 13".


They didn't understand the consequences of it at the time, and some of them are just operating on instinct and still don't- but "refuse to pursue the things you want because it's holy not to" in a time where the things you wanted became far more available (i.e. far less risky) had, and continues to have, massive downstream consequences.


In the face of this they insisted on "just do nothing" (rather than what they should have done, which was to accelerate life and the achievement of those milestones, not retard it), and when the youth walked away their persecution complex did the rest.  And the youth that remained were more likely to have the same hatred of life within them, or the same development issues that cause them to be compatible with delaying life far past that normal range, so the problem persists.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also, who the administration considers cops to be varies.


In a protestor-friendly administration, the fiery-but-peaceful protestors (who are enforcing the law the administration wished it could have) have qualified immunity while the cops don't; in one that is not so friendly, they do not.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


in terms of threat provided by what is happening outside the vehicle.




In terms of objective threat, sure.


But that's the entire debate in a nutshell: if one suffers from a [perhaps reasonable] expectation that cops are about to black-bag you, and in attempting to flee from them get shot by one who [perhaps reasonably] believes you're going to drive right into him, is it reasonable to suffer death under those circumstances?


Of course, we already have an answer to that: 12 locals and the relevant executive have to agree it isn't reasonable, since either one can [from a subjective standpoint] pardon, and the executive spends political power to do that.


Which is probably what it's going to come down to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Tasers and pepper spray (which are "shooting to wound"- you can't realistically use any firearm like this) won't go through a windshield or sheet metal.


Once she hit the gas, the gun was the only option.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Hamtrack style takeover




I'm not sure I follow- what is this referencing?




White liberals at the roost want to destroy their own societies because they make the category error that impoverishing white institutions only harms the uneducated white hicks.




Well, that and- because they're relatively rich (ironically, due to good institutions)- they're insulated from the consequences of destroying the institutions.  Besides, they'll still be on top afterwards due to their Allyship(tm) that was definitely earned and not just appropriated.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You need to go back to the drawing board and figure out the least-painful way to right the ship ASAP




We are here now: taking Blue's pawns off the board, in a fashion meant to ensure that, when Blue again calls for more pawns, less of them show up (Blue media is doing a great job of over-reporting the dangers here).  Would you prefer Red go after Blue directly?


Hence the physical removals, hence the [so far, only claimed] attempts to stabilize the nations from which they come.






robotically apply the harsh punishment to every single person who crosses the line trivially creates far more suffering than would be strictly necessary to prevent the greater evil




This is robotically applying the harsh punishment to the people who trafficked those humans (the greater evil in this case, at least from Red's perspective)- or at least, what Blue perceives as a harsh punishment despite it being objectively pretty lenient. Blue has to see on the news more of their pets being deleted, and whining about being afraid they'll be removed, every single day.  They have to listen to their peers cry that It's So Over and marinate in their own hysterics about the end of Our Democracy.  Some of them get so angry about this that they try to run over cops.


As for "but it's a human rights disaster", Blue has no leg to stand on here- they could have compromised for an amnesty properly but refused to, so clearly they don't care about their pets' rights beyond their usefulness as pets.


Ironically, that's the best way to criticize this event- using a human shield to cover hurting the outgroup, then striking back under "self-defense" when the outgroup decides they care as much about the life of the human shield as the ingroup did.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


it's that the immediate practical consequences are so irrelevant to the broad market forces at work that that guy's disappearance is not going to reshape the economy one iota, and consequently Americans' collective quality of life will not be improved at all.




Yeah, that was the argument that the traffickers made about how all this would improve the economy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I contend that the amount of suffering inflicted on a deportee by grabbing them overnight far exceeds the very diffuse harm that their presence on US soil inflicted on a given American.




Good for you.  I do not.


Stealing a cent from everyone would make you very rich; when punished, it looks disproportionate- wasn't it only a mere cent from everyone?

Can't you spare an extra cent?


But it's not about the extra cent, it's about removing the people who have it normalized that cents are available to steal; that's why we punish white-collar criminals when they do this.


(And to the extent that it makes the traffickers feel bad- it should, and "making them feel bad as punishment" is a salient thing, because the way they trafficked the humans was also stealing, though of political power rather than directly financial.  Now, that theft is being prosecuted, and the thief's final argument, "but you were bad for being able to afford it and refusing to", is just DARVO.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sure, but what actually happened here was half the country going "here's a free plane ticket, come on in, we'll never enforce this law, and you should ignore it- the guard may personally tell you you're in violation but he can't do anything, don't worry".


The guard now has the power to enforce the law, and has proceeded to do that.




without letting them pack their bags, say goodbye to their neighbors and coworkers, figure out what to do about pets, take a last stroll around the neighborhood that was their home for [X] years




As the reply to you states, a good chunk of these are already in the "this is the time you have to pack your bags and say goodbye" stage.  For the ones that have not, they've been on notice since January 2025 when some official got on TV and said the guard's power was coming back, and literally half the nation (and statistically, where the trafficked humans are most likely to live) went into hysterics about "the guard is finally removing people".




Killing enemy soldiers is not breaking Golden Rule.


It might not be their fault they were there, but I'm not actually owed special protection from things that are not my fault, and trying to force me to grant it is an injury much like removing trafficked humans is to you.  You could have bargained to change that law, and compromised with me, but you didn't do that.  So, by Golden Rule Your Rules, Fairly...


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sure, but that understanding (which I agree is the correct one) would, if adopted, have negative effects on the interests of:


    

  • Traditionalists, who claim that gayness causes bathhouse-sexuality (this is an instinctual reaction to gayness for a few reasons, plus the New Testament lists them separately)
    • 

  • Non-bathhouse gays, where the Overton window protecting scoundrels bathhouse-sexuality provides broad cover for most bedroom activities
    • 

  • Progressives, who claim zero correlation simply to spite the traditionalists (most progressives lack the same instinctual negative reaction to gayness anyway [i.e. they're women, or were raised nearly exclusively by them], and it's natural/easy for them to tolerate something that isn't an injury)
    • 

  • Liberals, who want to conserve the fact there was a time in living memory when it was possible to do this with women too
    • 



Which has the ultimate effect of no group really wanting to be less wrong about this until they're forced by bad luck to address a bad actor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


without letting them [wind down their life here]




They had literal years, decades even, to do this.  How much time is enough?




That is what strikes me as being in violation of the Golden Rule, as being unkind, cruel, inhumane about ICE raids.




I'd rather them prosecute the traffickers directly, but "daring to remove trafficked humans" might legitimately be the most punishment for the pro-trafficking faction that the anti-trafficking faction can muster.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


which of course is not the real reason




And further, this is the reason why older women push to have women younger then them treated as mentally equivalent to animals -> unable to consent, hence #fightfor25 (and to a large degree #metoo).




and will backfill a reason that sounds less jealous and more socially acceptable.




Well, that and feminists still need men to enforce the social order that privileges them.  Saying this directly would destroy that compact.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Notice me, semi!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


there is no reasonable way to go back and assess whether it was validly given or not or whether the lines were crossed




Yes, which is why intelligently-designed laws around sex sidestep the issue.


Let's look at the sex laws described in Deuteronomy and the social dynamics it encourages downstream of those things- remembering that this is at a time when asking people to deny their human instincts of immediate revenge was far lot more novel (and a lot more difficult due to lack of State capacity) than it is today, so we can say that these are laws/accommodations/compromises that are made because human biological instinct ultimately runs more along these lines than any modern view.


The relevant TL;DR here is:


    

  1. 

    If she actively cried rape, but in a place nobody could reasonably hear, she is assumed to have been raped by default and the judgment (of death) falls solely on the man.  This protects the woman- if she actually values the life of the man, she won't run off somewhere this can't be detected (and because the penalty for rape and murder are otherwise the same, there's no other incentive for the man not to just kill her)[1].
    

    2. 

  2. 

    If she didn't actively cry rape in a place someone could hear, then judgment falls on both (forced to marry if woman was unmarried, and death for both if married or engaged).  This ensures consent [to having participated in the violation, also [0]] cannot be revoked after the fact, which protects men, and also ensures that- if they both did want this- the woman is bound to/invested in total secrecy for the same reason the man is.  It also protects men from cuckoldry in an age where sex always results in babies[2], but this is more a "make sure our warriors don't burn down society by refusing to fight and instead throwing open the gates" thing.
    

    3. 





Now, because modern society is objectively stacked in favor of women (and this observation is a point towards this interpretation), we observe that we still have the strictures of the first (that protect women) but without the benefits of the second (that protect men).  That is why we push further and further into "consent can be revoked at any time"- that's simply what we should expect from female gender politics and the associated ignorance (intentional or otherwise) of the inherent moral hazard that being able to retroactively cry rape enables.


In a society that's objectively stacked in favor of men, by contrast, we should observe that the second case dominates.  It looks a little different when this happens; there tend to be a lot of mistresses, wives divorcing left with nothing, fathers disowning their children, old women intentionally locked out from self-sufficiency, casual ass-slapping, and all the other things Boomer women (and their [progressive] daughters) complain about the 50s and 60s for featuring.




[0] Feminists get angry about "has to marry the rapist", but ignores that all sex [outside marriage] can trivially be called rape for the same reasons it's so easy today (and the community at that time would agree; there's no reason a woman would ever have sex for pleasure- something traditionalists and progressives agree on, as it's dishonorable).  So the law here is "virginity is part of a woman's inherent value [normal men and women agree on this point completely provided contraceptives don't exist]; you break it, you buy it, and the woman is in charge of saying you broke it retroactively and at any time" (which is what progressives want to be able to do).


[1] If I recall correctly- and you'll have to correct me on this point- the US still has a version of this law (where it's some separate sex crime charge if either participant leaves their state of residence- in fact I'm pretty sure the mere suggestion of such is a crime).


[2] Traditionalists in particular will harp on and on about this because their instincts are incompatible with the technology that makes this so, but what that argument actually means is that the father of the family shouldn't be expected to lay down his life and toil to advance children that aren't his.  This is an argument that doesn't directly apply to women, so women naturally assert this dynamic doesn't exist... until the young men refuse to fight an enemy that promises better terms for young men.  (And yes, the lack of enemies in the West means women will further not see a need to co-operate until it's too late.)






"Wait, how do you establish evidence for lack of consent when it all happens behind closed doors?"




But see, that's what consent is: it's simply a codification of who is assumed to have automatically cried rape.  This is how "children can't consent" can even be a coherent sentence, because on dictionary reading it's nonsense.  This case is also the steelman for having this law- traditionalists and progressives are actively harmed by the existence of sex in general so it's understandable- but naturally, most of the fight in this case is over who gets to be "a child" -> "who automatically cried rape".


Naturally, because young women (13+; both trads and progs call this "child" for property rights and anti-sexual-competition reasons respectively, but biology doesn't agree with their assessment) are sexual competition for women but not men, women will push as hard as they can to make sure the definition of "children"/"automatically-considered-raped-for-sympathetic-reasons" is as wide as possible.  And I'd say "anyone who claims to be, at any time, ever" is pretty fucking wide already- the fact they semi-seriously want to set the age to 25 is proof they won't ever be satisfied with that.


Of course, setting it to "infinite" is just Deuteronomic law through the back door, and that's not going to happen as long as there are enough liberals (or liberal-sympathetic) who want to fuck more than one young woman.  Hence the stalemate.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But imagine a film that character-assassinates a real, non-famous 13 year old




Why imagine it when we have a real-life example?  That Adolescence Netflix series qualifies as well, though indirectly.




There's no reason anyone would make such a film




Young Man Bad and Muh Racism are clearly perfectly valid reasons to do this.  And sure, there were eventually legal consequences for the news networks in the direct case, but the outcome of that judgment wasn't exactly guaranteed given what happened (and the justice system gave a pass to) one year later.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Vecna talking to him about how weak children are and how they will do what he wants.




Yeah, that's still a perfect metaphor for the show's relationship with the audience [in that the writers clearly see anyone invested in it as stupid children].  "Fuck you, we're going to erase all prior characterization and what made these characters great in the first place, and hit them all with the stupid bat, retroactively rape the one affected most by said stupid bat, and turn them all into props.  But, for the fans who will be especially annoyed that this happens to the characters we're still desperately trying to pass off as children despite them being 10 years too old for that, they can have this loli wearing a uniform denoting she's cute and funny."


But hey, getting terrible results when tasking a bunch of writers that all hate boys [and the young men they become] with a burning passion to write a show made great through its portrayal of men is par for the course, so I guess it's no surprise this show suffers from it.




This isn't even the first major series where its most important kid character gets violently penetrated in a retcon not 2 minutes into the work's runtime.  (It further devolves into angry lesbians screaming at Skynet about their vaginas; coincidentally also featuring Linda Hamilton.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Tendies are kind of a one-note taste (and the sauce is doing most of the work anyway); the sandwiches, and the flavor profile of beef compared to chicken, are also more complicated.  There's less room for condiments as well since most of the sandwiches that contain one large tendie as patty always only consist of lettuce, pickle, maybe a tomato, and mayo/sauce (and again, a lot of fried/breaded chicken is simply a vehicle for the sauce or gravy, which is not true for a hamburger).


Of course, the real move there is to just get the nuggets/strips on the side with your hamburger in place of the fries.  Most fast-food places don't really do fries well anyway (they constantly forget to salt them and a lot of the time they just taste kind of bad to begin with, or are cold when you get home compared to tendies which have more thermal mass) so it's kind of a waste to get them these days.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So the only distinction I can really grasp is "am I getting paid for this or not."




Which is why the difference is meaningful in the first place.  The sharing of intimate images is something women in general want to be paid for, so obviously doing that without permission is bad; meanwhile the other sex stuff doesn't have anything to do with that, so it is OK, and it works as a "haha, ur a prude" trap for people who can't or won't understand the former dynamic is all that matters.


It's not any more complicated than that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


for lack of a better term, "lolita-esque"




I think "lolita-esque"- as in "adult/not-child pretends to be a child pretending to be an adult"- fits just fine.




even at the expense of them being 'ugly'




Wait, which kid character was ugly?  I mean sure, 11 is a bit of a gimme there, but "weird and butch" was part of the job description for that one.


In S1, outside of 11, you had:


    

  • The main character, who absolutely had to be a child star (and he does stand out from the rest in this regard);
    • 

  • The intentionally very cute/nerdy/sheltered-youngest-child one [that you'd better get attached to or the story falls apart];
    • 

  • The chubby perma-child, but still cute (even into S5, which is why he's the most normal-seeming character in the endgame); and
    • 

  • The other one, who was also cute- that may or may not have been his primary appeal for the writers but it's good that didn't matter
    • 



And then in S2, we got:


    

  • Tomboy supremacy
    • 



And then in S5, we got:


    

  • Suck my fat one (which was an excellent casting decision; being cute would have detracted from his character, but he's not outright ugly either)
    • 

  • I Can't Believe It's Not Loli, as previously discussed
    • 



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Plenty of 14 year old girls are still pretty far from physical adulthood.




Then perhaps they should have cast one that was "still pretty far" rather than heading straight into the uncanny valley?


Even Max, who's supposed to be (and her actor is, to my knowledge) significantly older, actually looks younger than Holly does; the illusion also quickly falls apart when she's standing next to (and being physically overpowered by) the other kid actors.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Leading to the obvious question, was this trauma what made Will gay?




I think it was the trauma from the retcon that did it, since Vecna didn't catch Will in S1; he'd just fallen prey to the environment at that point.  Though perhaps maybe the spores and the tentacles can infect you with the gay re: Robin, and why the gay characters didn't think the atmosphere in the Upside Down was dangerous when asked.  They were already carrying it, you see.






Is Vecna as a metaphor for pedophilla?




Vecna as a metaphor for the show's writers.  You've correctly identified that it is child abuse, but not for the reasons you're probably thinking of.


"Let's just use children as props to [ab]use because we're too lazy to write them as actual human beings" is an incredibly apt description of S5, and most of the good parts of S5 were... starring a 14 year old playing a 9 year old in full jailbait uniform for basically no reason (clearly, practical for trudging around in the forest and desert heat)[1].  You do kind of forget that after a while, but it presses the "child beauty pageant" button.


It's a grown woman wearing child-face.  Which is consistent with how the rest of the formerly-kid characters act, come to think of it (it's especially jarring with 11, since that character's design means they can't hide it... even though they kind of did in S4), and probably why the writers wouldn't see much problem with it either.  After all, how else are you going to convince the audience this [again, obviously grown woman] is A Child?  Remember, the original cast was actually physically younger than their stated ages (and, uh, that's how it is in real life too), but if you forget why that works this is the result.


As for those nice, veiny, oral intubation scenes with Vecna... I think they were just going for shock value and stock "villain is a walking pedo stereotype".  They had a schedule to keep, after all.  That's not really anti-woke, though[2].  It also blows suspension of disbelief because Stranger Danger accompanied the Satanic Panic, and the latter was a massive plot point in S4- there's no fucking way those "kids" should have believed that, and yet.




It's purely there for pandering.




And it didn't even do that effectively, because it basically destroyed that ship (and the teenage girls most interested in it) for a moralizing gotcha.  Again, an example of "how adults think sexuality works", not how it actually works[2, again].




Contrast S1, where as you said, the characters acted fucking normal.  The kid characters in particular weren't just cheap throwaway props, especially and most relevantly Will, who exercised agency and intelligence every time he was actually interacting with something (and even better- every time he takes the advice of adults- suffers overwhelmingly negative consequences of doing so instead of using his fucking brain; this was a massive plot point in S2 and basically every season thereafter, because [the writers needed a prop, so they made sure] he never learned).  And it's not like the writers forgot how to write a character like this, since Derek (of all people) does this every time he's on screen.


[1] Adventuring outfits don't look like this, they look like this.  One would expect an artist who draws the latter character nude on occasion to have the more sexualized design, yet in fact the opposite is true.


[2] But it is what traditionalists will think is anti-woke, because they're usually incapable of noticing that "forcing an adult outlook on kids with respect to sex" is the specific mode of abuse (and is correctly called out as a bad thing when it happens to Will in S1), rather than suggesting the actual act itself.  It's a very feminine mode of sexual abuse, which men don't usually understand (they can only identify suggestions of the actual act).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I also think it was trapped in development hell, and had been through so many damned rewrites, that they'd lost track of what they were even doing anymore. So a lot of the thematic and character threads seemed to have fallen between the cracks.




The show has a common through-line where all the characters forget their development between seasons and they spend half the runtime just getting back to where their relationship should logically be.  The only season that's exempt from this is S1, and it actually features all of the characters as it actively forces control out of the hands of the adult characters a lot of the time[1] (compare S5, where they're been reduced to stock characters that forgot all their development).


I get that some of that is due to bad luck- writer's strikes, the uncommon cold, etc.- and the fact that a lot of the dynamics rest on the cast not aging out, except they did.  So "a delayed X may be good someday, but a bad X is bad forever" can't apply and "well, let's just get it over with" is how it goes down.




Most of the distinct character dynamics seemed to have been lost besides the love triangle between Steve, Jonathan and Nancy.




They should have all drowned in the Cum Room, to be honest.  And given that we already got a "if you didn't understand whatever the fuck that dialog was, it's your problem I guess" from the writers...




Finn Wolfhard has been phoning it in since he started doing movies and I'm not sure anyone cared about him and 11 anymore.




Hold on, Mike was actually in Season 5?  I mean, I guess it's no big deal, he's only the main love interest for two of the characters [2] so it's natural he'd be absent.




Also, I watched Fire and Ash over the same period of time and enjoyed the contrast between that and Stranger Things: in F&A, characters get punished for their stupid, unforced mistakes.  Sully is an objectively bad leader (as are all leaders in the Blue Man Group- the RDA is most just busy jacking off in a corner for this one), there are serious consequences to this, and it was great.




I guess at the end of the day, it didn't ruin the show for me, which is high praise these days.




I dropped it after that episode and am unwilling to watch the finale- if the show doesn't give a shit about its characters, why should I?  The lack of shitposting about it on 4chan is notable and suggests a substantial jump in quality, but I've had enough and will just read the synopsis later.  Though, that reminds me that I really need to catch up on both the movie and S2 of Made in Abyss.




[1] The fact that they knew to do this demonstrated that this was actually going to be a decent show that was going to use its characters properly- specifically the kid characters, who generally tend to be underdeveloped.  I mean, even Will got a massive amount of development in the opening scene of S1 simply by going straight for the gun (and by being generally intelligent with the tools he had)- you'd expect him to get even better than that in the later seasons but he actively regressed until the final crybaby "i DoN'T lIkE gIrLs" (and accepting being cucked out of his role in the story by Joyce for half the season) state in S5.


And sure, S5 has some of this... but only when Holly and Derek (and to a point, Max) are involved.  Hell, it'd have been funnier (and ironically, more mature) if Derek was secretly gay; "suck my fat one" indeed.


[2] Which is why I'm actually glad that ship is dead- Will age-regressed hard, and it would have been weird and creepy as a consequence (which is partially, in my opinion, why that emotional scene was doomed no matter what else they did).  I guess being a bottom bitch (in the ending) is natural for what his character ultimately became, but what a fucking disappointment.  The same thing's true of 11 but for different reasons; she only aged physically, not mentally.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


but I find anti-woke observers become too hung up on woke trappings rather than critically analyzing the story itself




Anti-wokes are mostly just temporarily-embarassed wokes, what else is new?




this never would have happened in the 1980s




What, hiding behind Muh Social Issue to excuse/justify bad writing?  That wasn't really a widespread thing in the '80s [or at least, if it was, the media like this has been consigned to the dustbin where it belongs], so doing that in what bills itself as an '80s highlight reel is... going to cause some whiplash, to put it lightly.


That said, though, there are a few good stereotypically-'80s series that proceeded to get worse and more flanderized as time went on (I'm mostly thinking of the slasher movies here) into the point of unrecognizability, perhaps it is indeed period-accurate.




and making that central to his personal story and character growth needed to win the entire conflict




No, the justified reaction is that this plot point was fucking stupid, because...




and making that central to [Will's] personal story and character growth needed to win the entire conflict




...Will doesn't have any meaningful personal story or character growth.  Not that there was much of that post-S1 anyway for any of the other S1 characters, but Will didn't even get an establishing character moment in S1 or S2 beyond "be the MacGuffin" (and the growth [or active de-growth, for that matter] he did get in S2 kind of erased what little he had in S1), and that's ignoring all the retcons.


So he's in the unenviable position of both being a perfect vehicle for Author's Pet Cause without really having earned any of it.  But then, that's also a hallmark of modern culture too, so maybe that's actually period-accurate and I'm just complaining too much about it; now if you'll excuse me, I have some Doritos to eat.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


even if they are less dangerous.




In an environment of actual equality they axiomatically must be treated as equally dangerous and destructive; the overwhelming majority of the modern problems with the relations between the sexes (problems that started 150 years ago, though various economic forces during that time would disguise this) are caused by society's failure to do exactly this.