#i literally got out humankind so i could quote directly. how is this my life | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mayfriend-archive · 3 years

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Totally understand if you're not up for it and fully recognize the ronald mcdonald dom/sub anon vibes which is an AMAZING post btw but like...now i'm curious, what the hell did Lord of the Flies anon DO that got him blocked for the discourse? like...i just can't wrap my head around high school lit being...uh...that inflammatory i guess?

Okay so, I'll start by saying I've had a new anon from apparently the same anon saying they are NOT the person I blocked, just a rando making the same points, but I'll answer your question anyway just to set out why this person in particular got blocked, out of the several thousand who reblogged/commented on that very successful addition to the LoTF post I made.

First off, I added the 'real life Lord of the Flies' story because I thought it was a good story. I had read about it only a couple days beforehand in Humankind and, after reading out the entire chapter to my parents who weren't very interested, I was excited that there was not only a post where it would be relevant to post, but that I wouldn't be hijacking it, as it was already rejecting the widespread interpretation taught in many schools, that humanity is inherently savage.

When making the addition, I a) did not think it would get more than a couple reblogs, because the post was already at 50k notes and I figured anyone that might be interested would already have seen it, and b) I did not know the very specific context that prompted William Golding to write the book; all I knew was that he had been a teacher at a public school (basically, the poshest schools in the country - think Eton, Harrow, very 'old money' places that pump out Conservative politicians by the bucket-load 🤢) who hated his job and the boys he taught (which, valid), and new information I'd been given in Humankind - that Golding had said to his wife one day, "Wouldn't it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?" - which had no mention of The Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne, which I have since learned was the text that Golding loathed enough to write an entire novel in refutation of - and included what I considered a very telling letter from Golding to his publisher, in which Golding wrote of his belief that 'even if we start with a clean slate, our nature compels us to make a muck of it.' Another Golding quote that I believe portrays his belief in humanity's 'innate savagery' is that "man produces evil as a bee produces honey."

Obviously, the author of a book putting forward the case for humanity's inherent goodness was going to oppose Golding's hypothesis; Bregman not only noted Golding's literary accomplishments and beliefs, but his personal life.

When I began delving into the author's life, I learned what an unhappy individual he'd been. An alcoholic. Prone to depression. A man who, as a teacher, once divided his pupils into gangs and encouraged them to attack each other. "I have always understood the Nazis," Golding confessed, "because I am of that sort by nature." (Humankind by Rutger Bregman, p. 24-25)

I have bolded the part about him as a teacher, because it is incredibly relevant to the original post that I commented on, which begins with a comic of a teacher locking her class in to see them 'recreate' Lord of the Flies, something which the follow up comments before mine staunchly reject as both misunderstanding the point of the book, and the fact that it took the kids in Lord of the Flies a significant amount of time without adult supervision to go 'savage'. This misreading of the text is widespread enough that when Golding won the Nobel Prize for Lord of the Flies, the Swedish Nobel committee wrote that his book 'illuminate[s] the human condition in the world of today'. Whether or not they misread it is beyond my expertise - they do at least mention the factors of the outside world neglected by many when analysing the book, but still seem to believe it says something about human nature as a whole rather than just, to quote thedarkbutbeige 'British kids being rat bastards' - but Golding quite happily took his Nobel prize on this basis. Which, in fairness, I would too. It's a fucking Nobel prize.

It was with this knowledge, and this knowledge alone, that I stated in my now very, very widely read comment that Golding 'wrote the book to be a dick', in response to the tags of the person I reblogged from. As I said, I now know that Golding did not write the book (solely) because he hated the kids he taught, but as a response to The Coral Island and the general idea that clearly the British were inherently civilsed, whilst the people they colonised and enslaved were inherently savage. So. That's the background.

The anon - or rather, the person I thought was anon - was the sole exception out of dozens of replies, who instead of telling me about The Coral Island politely decided it was time to go ALL CAPS and regurgitate points already made by thespaceshipoftheseus, and implied that the only reason that the real life Tongan castaways didn't go all Lord of the Flies was because they weren't British. Not because they weren't surrounded by violence like the boys in Lord of the Flies, or there wasn't a World War ongoing, or that they weren't the upper, upper, upper crust of a class-obsessed society like Britain - but because they weren't British. A complete inversion of the concept that Golding was trying to get across - now, instead of all of humanity being equally prone to savagery in the right conditions, it was solely nationality that determined it. As in, the British were inherently savage, but nobody else was.

I, trying for humour, made the terrible mistake of replying to them.

I won't lie, I was absolutely blown away that this was real life. What I think they were trying to do was be that Cool Tumblr Person who, after somebody's been shitty on a post, goes to their blog and sees something Damning in their about/description. In an ideal world, I imagine I'd have gone nuts or done something Unforgiveable. In what I can only call the rant that followed, they stated several times that I needed to go back to high school to get some 'proper literary analysis' skills and that the story of the Tongan castaways was completely unrelated to the point at hand which. I mean, I disagree, considering that I made the addition, but I couldn't get my head around how commenting on a post that was already rejecting the thesis that the 'point' of Lord of the Flies was that humanity was inherently savage and was, in fact, about how kids - British or otherwise - learn how to function from the adults around them, and that traumatised, terrified children aren't going to create a mini-Utopia, and put forward a real life example of how without the key additions of an ongoing world war, a colonial Empire and the subsequent mindset of thinking you are 'inherently civilised' and therefore can't do anything wrong, actually, people just want to take care of each other.

A friend has since asked me why I even have 'england' in my description. To be honest, it's a timezone thing - I talk to a lot of people online who don't share my timezone, and it generally makes me feel like if I don't reply immediately because it's 3am, they have the tools to see that I'm not in their timezone and not just ignoring them. I did consider changing it to 'british' or 'uk' after it was... 'used against me', I guess, simply because I didn't want to deal with it, but you know what. No. Not gonna do that. I am from England, and I have never hid that fact. I have a tag called 'uk politics', during Eurovision I refer to the UK's act as 'us' (even if I really, really don't want to. Because James Newman slaughtered that song and it was downright embarrassing), I regularly post stuff in my personal tag about where I live (and mostly complain about this piece of shit government). If people really think my nationality makes every point I make null and void, then they don't have to follow me or interact with my posts; tumblr is big, and I am one medium-small blog very easily passed over.

I did reply to them, trying to explain the above, but their next response really just doubled down. Because I used the word British instead of English - foolishly because the posts above mine focused on Britishness, and also because although Golding was English and taught English kids, the pro-Imperialism author of The Coral Island, R. M. Bannatyne was actually Scottish so, ding ding ding, falls into the 'British' category - they then decided that I was somehow trying to pretend I wasn't English and made all the same points, before ending with this doozy:

At this point, I knew there was nothing to be gained from replying, because if we're whipping out conditions like they're pokemon cards then there's no actual conversation anymore, and I'm not going to start mudslinging like an identity politician. They made up their mind, and I figured there could be no harm in letting them think that they 'won' by blocking them instead of replying.

Until the ask. INNATE ENGLISH SAVAGERY did, I'll admit, make me think it was them, back again. I even thought up a really good response approximately 12 hours after I replied, I was that sure. Until the second message came in, and said they were just someone who came from the post and made the same point by chance. So the saga draws to a close... for now.

It may have been them, it may not have been - the anon feature makes it impossible to be sure, but as the second message I got said, we're in a heatwave. It's too hot to argue. And I've just written a goddamn essay about a book I dislike anyway.

My pasty English ass is going to go melt. If there's Disk Horse, do not tell me. I am Done™

#emily speaks #asks #anon #lord of the flies #this is long. this is so long. why is this so long #i literally got out humankind so i could quote directly. how is this my life

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kob131 · 4 years

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https://rwdestuffs.tumblr.com/post/625369121618640896/done-dirty-gods

I’d like to make the point that the light god, the dude who killed Oz repeatedly and abused Salem to the point that she became the villainous being that we know today, is somehow on the “Heroes Wiki.”

You know, not like she demanded special treatment, tried going behind his back and tried to destroy him and his brother all because she demanded that the cycle of death not apply to who she wants.

Because I guess abusers are heroes now.

Says the creator of the ‘Savivor Mom Raven’ series.

Oh, and also, I HAD TO USE GODDAMN SOUTH PARK AS PART OF MY OPENER!

Incorrectly might I add as both the Light and Dark gods are not portrayed as directly opposing each other. So you’re mad you ‘had’ to use a show’s meme...incorrectly.

Let’s get this out of the way for any of idiots out there: Salem was NOT responsible for Humanity 1.0′s death. She may have provoked these two asshats, but she wasn’t the one who

1: Loaded the gun.

2: Aimed the gun.

3: Fired the gun.

By the same logic, people say Yang murdered Adam. How does that go with you again?

What did Salem do?- She just stood up to them and, inadvertently, gave them a target.

She directly lied to the first iteration of humanity after being punished for lying to the gods and being directly told she shouldn’t have done that all over demanding her husband be brought back to life even though God knows how many people die and aren’t brought back by the gods despite having just as much reason to want them back as Salem.

As far as I’m concerned, these gods were the villains of the story, and what I wouldn’t give to see Yang punch one of them in the face.

Probably because it’s a penis vs. vagina for you.

When making these “Godly” characters, it’s okay to give them flaws. In fact, that’s what makes the Greek Gods, Norse Gods, Japanese Gods, and Egyptian Gods so interesting. They have flaws, weaknesses, and more relatable personality aspects that makes it seem like we could have the guy responsible for the ocean’s tides as our next door neighbor, or the adorable little dog across the street as the one responsible for the sun coming up… and beating up a fish in a giant mech suit. Goddamn, I want to play Okami again.

I got off-topic. The point is, is that it’s okay for these Gods to give flawed advice… Provided that they gave advice at all.

See, Light God was insensitive to Salem’s plight, and in all likelihood, used the same rhetoric that her father used to lock her up in that tower as an excuse to just brush her off.

Salem: (falling to her knees) Please... Please, bring him back to me.

God of Light: I understand your pain, but you demand of me that which I cannot make so. Life and death are part of a delicate balance.

Such terrible rhetoric.

BTW, funny how you mention the Greek Gods. You want to know what the role of most Greek Gods are in their home myths?

Living Embodiments of Punishing Pride.

Helena Of Troy’s mother, Narcassist and Echo, Odysseus, Arachne, Midas-

Most of the targets of the gods were people who dared to act arrogant and like they were better/deserved more with the Gods smiting them for their fatal sin. Even the Gods themselves weren’t exempt from this, as many of them fell prey to their own pride and arrogance with the few (mostly) unscathed Gods being that way because they were significantly less prideful. Fuck, the Greek Gods came to be because Chronos was so cocky he could just eat his kids that it never occurred to him that his wife Rhea would trick him.

In fact, an always noteworthy story I remember was the tale of Orpheus and Euradyice, where a man traveled to the Underworld using his musical talents and demanded to have his wife brought back to life. It ALMOST didn’t work but he was just able to convince Hades on the condition that he not turn back on his way home. Spoiler Alert, he did out of a lack of faith in Hades, his wife WAS following him but he lost her because of it.

I bring this up because the Greek Gods were the INSPIRATION for the Brothers and I’d bet dollars to donuts that Orpheus’ tale was the inspiration for Salem and Ozma. You try to act like you know something about these things but completely ignore that hubris, the thing that fucked Salem over, was a running theme in the source of her backstory.

So when Salem goes to Dark God, and he does fulfill her request, it’s honestly like Salem is now picking a side. Except, it turns out that Dark God actually has to answer to the Light God.

God of Light: I know we have our differences, but I have not come here with the aim to control you. The same, however, cannot said for her. This woman came to you only after I denied her pleas – pleas that would have disrupted the balance that you and I created. Together.

The younger brother ponders this revelation.

God of Darkness: Then it seems I owe you an apology. Allow me to correct my mistake.

No he doesn’t. But nice cut context.

Does the relationship between the gods seem… manipulative to anyone? Like… The Light God (Fuck it, let’s call him “Lumin” for now, I’m not typing out that whole thing) is abusive to his brother?

Considering what I quoted above- Nope.

Acording to… I think it was Qrow, possibly in a WOR, the Dark God (Let’s call him “Ebon” because that’s a badass name, and I’m honestly not in the mood for “Light = Good, Dark = Evil” to be the underlying theme here) made his creations first. then Lumin was all “I can make something too!” and made humans to one-up his brother.

RWBY Volume 4 Episode 8 “A Much Needed Talk”

Qrow: They were two brothers. The older sibling, the God of Light, found joy in creating forces of life. Meanwhile, the younger brother, the God of Darkness, spent his time creating forces of destruction. As you can imagine, they both had pretty different ideas about how things should go. The older one would spend his days creating water, plants, wildlife. And at night, his brother would wake to see all the things that the elder had made and become disgusted. To counteract his brother's creations, the God of Darkness brought drought, fire, famine, all he could do to rid Remnant of life. Life always returned. So one night, the younger brother went and made something - something that shared his innate desire to destroy anything and everything.

Ruby: The creatures of Grimm.

Qrow: You guessed it. The older brother finally had enough. Knowing that their feud couldn't last like this forever, he proposed that they make one final creation... together, something that they could both be proud of, their masterpiece. The younger brother agreed. This last great creation would be given the power to both create and destroy. It would be given the gift of knowledge, so that it could learn about itself and the world around it. And most importantly, it would be given the power to choose, to have free will to take everything it had learned and decide which path to follow - the path of light or the path of darkness. And that is how Humanity came to be.

You misrepresent the show AND got it backwards. The God of Light created things first, then The God of Darkness and Humanity was a joint project.

Why should we consider you at all reliable, especially given how easy it would be to research this?

Like… Does that at all seem healthy to you?

No in fact, The God of Darkness is kind of a jackass. But nice job portraying your delusions as the exact opposite dumbass.

But regardless of that relationship, Lumin basically acted like that one abusive parent who destroys all of the child’s toys just because they went to the other parent to do something that the first parent was callous in denying them to do. Sorry if that brought up any bad memories for people.

More like they took the toy away when the child tricked the other parent into buying it even though the first said no.

Not to mention the relics. Outside of their purpose to resummon the gods, they don’t really do much. But these are literal artifacts left behind by said gods.

Plus, Lumin give Oz an impossible task of uniting humanity. It’s like he wants Oz to fail because he just wants an excuse to wipe them all out again.

How is it impossible when Humanity was united BEFORE SALEM?

Lumin treats humankind as an “experiment gone wrong” as if he’s just playing with peoples’ lives for his own amusement. If anything, Ebon is more sympathetic because he actually listens to their problems and wants to help them out.

Yeah-

The God of Darkness created the Grimm that make Remnant such a horrible place to live and was the one that killed all of humanity.

God of Darkness: My own gift to them... used against me.

The God of Light looks away in disappointment as the God of Darkness squeezes the sphere within his hand, creating a massive shockwave that envelops the world, smiting everything and everyone in its path. Humanity has been turned to dust, only Salem remains due to her immortality.

How is he more sympathetic?

Meanwhile Lumin is all “Sucks that your man died. Now get out.” at best.

We get it- You’re delusional.

Let’s take a look at another set of flawed gods in the form of The Norse Pantheon. Namely, Odin, Loki, and Thor. In myth, these guys were all given tasks that were basically impossible. Thor was tasked with drinking the ocean, and failed. Odin wrestled with time, and was brought down. And Loki lost an eating contest to fire. These flaws and weaknesses in regards to their hubris are part of them.

Meanwhile, Apollo lost a love to Eros because he said that he couldn’t shoot as well as him but I guess you’d assume Eros was the bad guy.

I mentioned this briefly in my “Done dirty: Oz” post, but Oz was basically brought back to cause conflict. Because… I guess Lumin was bored?

Or you know- a second chance to have the gifts of the Brothers again.

But the narrative wants people to see that Lumin and Ebon are “All good. All caring. And all knowing.”

Which is a load of bullshit. The narrative tries to paint Salem as some unsympathetic witch who couldn’t let go. When…

1: The woman was abused and locked in a tower until Oz came to rescue her.

2: She was willing to fight God to get him back. If anything, that shows true love. If you want my opinion, if you’re not willing to deck a deity in the nose for your loved one, then you don’t care about them (Take that, Abraham. Willing to sacrificing your own son just because your God told you to. Bet you wouldn’t see that from Amaterasu).

1. Doesn’t matter. There have to be people living just as bad if not WORSE than Salem and lost loved ones- it’s literally the rules EVERYONE has to abide by.

2. No, she tried to fight two gods because she was pissy. She never tried to fight them until AFTER lying to the God of Darkness and lead people to their deaths. All in the name of a legendary HERO, someone who WOULDN’T want to be brought back after all this death.

What I’m saying is that these gods are detached. Which would be an interesting aspect if the narrative had bothered to show that as being a bad thing.

So were the Greek Gods. Not the point of either one.

Then again, this is all being told by Jinn, a creation of the Gods (Namely Lumin). So maybe there’s some bias in there where they’re trying to make Salem out to be irredeemable while the gods are the undisputed good guys- and holy SHIT!- Jinn’s in on the gaslighting.

i mean… I still want everyone to eventually realize that Salem was gaslighted into being the villain of the story. because that sounds way better than the “Abused woman lashes out and becomes evil” angle that they seem to be going at.

Yeah and Adam was branded. Guess that means you think Adam was in right to chop off Yang’s arm then.

Funny thing there- You literally can’t redeem Adam OR Salem and keep the other evil without looking hypocritical because they committed the SAME FUCKING SINS.

But given the writers’ ability to handle racism (or lack thereof), I don’t exactly have a lot of confidence in this.

Way to reference the plotline with the walking counter example in it.

Then again, the did call her Salem…

… But also again, they did write the WF plot as that horrible mess…

But they also looked into a lot of fairy tale aspects for their characters…

While you didn’t do a lick of research or else you’d know the shit about the Greek Gods.

Then again, you couldn’t even be bothered to confirm the shit about the Brothers even as you openly say ‘I don’t remember this clearly.’ So what really should I expect?

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yanagi-uxinta · 5 years

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Adam Taurus, fandom, and redemption.

Okay this is my first proper RWBY analysis post because after several weeks of having mine and several other fans’ opinions misconstrued and shit on just because we like a *problematic character* I’m fed up. So if you don’t like Adam, you’re sick of all the RWBY bickering on your dash, or you just want to look at cat pictures and chill, best give this post a miss.

For all my annoyed tone, I’m going to try and bring this down and do an actual examination of Adam in general, why his fans are frequently said to want his character to be redeemed (whether we do or not), and what we mean by ‘redemption’ in the first place. I will not use this post to shit on people’s ships or anything like that, and honestly Bumblebee probably won’t have much or anything to do with this analysis at all.

Disclaimer: I am only speaking for myself. I know several other Adam fans who will likely agree with me, in the broad strokes of my argument if not the fine detail, but there are going to be those who disagree completely with what I say. This is just my take on what the hell has happened to the reaction to Adam’s character and the fandom since the end of volume 6. Of course there will be spoilers so if you’ve not seen the last few episodes of volume 6 yet, don’t continue reading! The rest will be under the cut with spoilers from the outset.

So since Adam’s death in the show, a lot of discussion has centred around how his writing was handled, both for his character and for the larger Faunus discrimination plot that his character tied into. While I may not personally have enjoyed the turn his character took, I will not be berating the writers for that or shouting about Monty, as that isn’t fair to anyone, is disrespectful to Monty himself, and we’ve always got fanfiction for our ‘I would have preferred this’ scenarios.

Looking at the writing alone, let’s have a recap of what we’ve got, focusing first on what we see of him, then what other characters say about him. This is going to get long, fair warning, as quite a few of the complaints I’ve seen on Adam reviews so far have been how people have left certain scenes and information out to support their story. I’m trying not to do that, but given I’m also summarising and trying not to quote every scene and mention, I might miss a few things. Apologies if I do.

- Adam was introduced as a high-ranking member of the White Fang.

- He was older than Blake, cast estimates say by about 5 years.

- He was a skilled swordsman with an extremely powerful semblance, and is used to leading raids for the White Fang. He started back when Ghira was in charge; this is also when he first killed in order to save Ghira’s life during a fight against humans. While he initially accepted Ghira’s admonishment, Sienna’s claim that he was a hero and the other WF members cheering him seemed to facilitate his later ruthless nature. He showed particular enjoyment when attacking SDC locations and staff, where his killing was not encouraged, but it also wasn’t punished.

- He initially believed in better rights for the Faunus, and that the White Fang would bring about a revolution.

- He shows no compassion for humans, and a willingness to kill them if they get in his way.

- He rejected Cinder’s first recruitment attempt because she was a human advocating for a ‘human cause’, despite her claiming they would both benefit.

- Cinder chose to ambush a Maiden rather than push the issue with Adam, and only returned to press-gang him into service after she had acquired half of the Fall Maiden’s power.

- Blake left between Cinder’s two visits. Adam’s lieutenant was shown swearing to bring her back, only for Adam to tell him to ‘forget it – it’s time I returned to Mistral and-’ here he is cut off by Cinder’s return.

- Adam worked with Cinder after his people were either injured or murdered by her, Emerald and Mercury, since the only options given to him were to work with her for lien and dust, or die – implied to be by immolation. Cinder had to demonstrate her Maiden powers to get him to agree since until she did, he seemed willing to fight.

- Adam had enough sway with the White Fang that even after their numerous casualties during ‘Breach’, that they continued to follow his orders.

- He participated in the Battle of Beacon, where he provided the ships in which the Grimm were smuggled in, and was seen fighting and presumably murdering Atlas soldiers and Academy students.

- This is where his anger and the first signs of abuse of Blake became apparent. He saw Beacon as an opportunity to strike back at humanity en masse; to destroy their communications and one of their main signs of strength – the Academy, despite Beacon accepting multiple Faunus students. He sees peace and equality as impossible, and undesirable. He equates Blake’s ‘impossible’ desire for an equal society with his desire for her; and rather than try to get her back, he decides to destroy everything she loves as he sets out to impose his version of justice on humankind. At this point, his two goals are balanced. He starts by amputating Yang’s arm when she, a human, comes to Blake’s defence, and would have killed her had Blake not intervened.

- After Beacon Falls, Adam is pursued by authorities, and meets all attempts to bring him into custody with ‘brutal force’.

- He returns to Sienna Khan in Mistral. Here he is ‘punished’ for his participation in the Battle of Beacon, but we get no details on what that is, only that it wasn’t as severe as it could have been. Adam does not seem affected by the punishment at all, and pressures Sienna to agree to the attack on Haven. It is implied he has explained his deal with Cinder to Sienna, but we do not know to what extent or if he mentioned how he was recruited. All Sienna seems to know is that these ‘humans’ are an unknown quantity who have given Adam empty promises, and that Adam’s agreement to fight at Beacon demonstrates his talents being wasted by short-sightedness.

- Adam calls in Hazel to explain more. Here we learn that the White Fang practices execution for treasonous acts – something already covered briefly with Tuckson.

- Sienna believes the Faunus cannot win a war against humans, which seems to be her leading motivation behind not starting one as opposed to any moral reasoning. Adam disagrees, and Sienna takes the chance to listen. Adam’s argument is that the Faunus are superior, and they have the help of Hazel’s ‘master’, which would swing the war in their favour. He believes humans should serve the Faunus. Sienna does not directly rebuke him, but seems frustrated as she says she’s ‘had enough of this conversation for tonight’, and orders the guards to escort them out.

- This is when Adam’s ambitions are revealed. He performs a coup against Sienna, saying he is doing what’s best for the Faunus. He murders Sienna, pinning the death on an anonymous human huntsman, and makes her a martyr. When Hazel objects, Adam’s reasoning is that Salem was dubious about Sienna’s willingness to cooperate – with him in charge, that issue is removed.

- As High Leader, he orders the Albain brothers to slaughter Blake’s family in Menagerie, but to bring Blake to him alive after they made a stand against his leadership. Here his composure is shown to be slipping, and the Albain’s imply they will replace him if his sanity suffers too much. This is the first time we see him close to losing control; he was angry at Beacon but still completely in control of his reactions. The attack fails thanks to the Belladonnas refusing to go down easy, Blake working with Sun, and being able to convert Ilia mid-fight. The Albains are killed or imprisoned, Menagerie rallies behind Blake against Adam.

- At the attack on Haven, Adam oversees the setting of the bombs on the CCT and the Academy, and orders the small team back to ‘perimeter watch’. Before they can, Hazel is thrown out of the building, distracting the group long enough for Blake to arrive and demand they stand down. Adam’s obsession is brought back up again; he’s amused that after the attack in Menagerie failed, Blake ‘delivered herself to him’ anyway. He is taken aback when Blake’s back-up arrives, called the ‘brothers and sisters’ of the White Fang members. In one case, this is literal. Adam insists they are enemies, but is interrupted by the arrival of the Mistral Police Force with Kali. His emotions get out of hand again; backed into a corner he tries to detonate the bombs in a mass murder-suicide attempt, which fails thanks to Ilia disarming all of the bombs. His own people start to doubt him, even as Adam justifies his actions as making humanity pay for what they’ve done – even though the vast majority of the people present are Faunus, not humans.

- When Hazel refuses to offer aid, Adam attempts to murder Blake. This is the infamous ‘dodges into the sword slash, cracks him on the back of the head’ move. This initiates a battle between the eight White Fang members, Sun, Ilia, and the Menagerie army.

- This is where Volume 5’s poor writing, pacing, and placement make things awkward (please, no arguments. While 5 had it’s enjoyable moments, even the writers have flat out said it was rushed and there is a 2 hour long video on all the placement issues of the Ruby vs Cinder team fight alone. You can like it by all means, I’m not saying don’t like it, but from a technical standpoint it’s bad). Adam is still on the ground after ordering the start of the fight, despite a battle around him, Blake running a quarter of the way around the courtyard following Hazel getting dragged back indoors by Weiss’ lancer, seeing her team, watching Yang chase Raven into the Vault, silently communing with Ruby, and running back outside around a quarter of the courtyard again... only to be standing in front of him, still kneeling on the ground, at the opening of the next episode. And when we see Blake running, she’s not doing her super-fast run from the Black trailer and choosing to be Yang’s partner back in Volume 1, it’s a normal jog. So Adam just... stayed kneeling on the ground until plot plonked Blake back in front of him rather than diving into the battle around him. I digress.

- The White Fang are overwhelmed/disarmed. Adam gets back up, says he will make Blake regret ever coming back (on her own terms, I assume he means...). More police are inbound, as are huntsmen... despite Qrow not being able to find any earlier in the season... and Blake claims she is here for Haven, not Adam – even though her sole reason for being on the continent is stopping Adam. Discrepancies aside, Adam continues to paint Blake as a coward who cannot face him without back up, claims he has powerful friends – something refuted by Sun. The White Fang are being arrested, Hazel is... offscreen pissing off everybody else with his semblance, and Blake says she has ‘more important thing to deal with’ than Adam making her regret coming to Haven. Adam gets pissed, attacks Blake and Sun for a few seconds, then makes a run for it since the police airships have a spotlight trained on him, and as Blake speculates, he wants to lure the two of them away and pick them off.

- Adam observes Hazel fleeing with Emerald and Mercury, and chooses not to make contact.

- This is where the short confuses the timeline slightly. I’ll go with what I think makes the most sense/is implied by the narrative.

- Adam returns to the WF throne room, only to hear the remaining free WF members complaining about his abandonment at Haven. Considering Ilia said only Adam escaped Haven, it’s unclear how the rest of the Mistral WF members knew what happened since this scene is implied to have happened as soon as Adam returned from Haven. Either these were a part of the ‘perimeter watch’ and weren’t accounted for by the police, Ilia was wrong about the success of the police (unlikely as we see all eight of the WF Haven group being apprehended), or this is a continuity error. Either way, Adam demands they step away from his throne, implying the group were considering a coup. Whether they were or not, Adam initially explains his demand as ‘we have work to do’. When they refuse, citing his abandonment of the WF at Haven, he repeats his demand. They refuse: ‘We’re not taking orders from you anymore. We heard you folded the moment you got sass from the Belladonna girl. I guess she’s got more control over you than you-’ It is at this point – specifically on the word ‘control’ – that Adam draws Wilt and slaughters everyone in the room. He retakes his throne seeming completely calm and not even out of breath, muses on ‘the Belladonna girl. Blake,’ stands, and slashes his throne apart and screams.

- I assume this is where the scene from the end of his short fits in, where he drops his mask in the forest and staggers as if exhausted. It seems to me that Adam has massacred every White Fang member left in the headquarters, explaining his fatigue, and in dropping the mask he is abandoning the White Fang and thus the Faunus – choosing to focus solely on Blake.

- Two weeks later, Blake sees him blindfolded and hooded on the train headed for Argus. This implies, with his admission of stalking her later, that in those two weeks he tracked her down and followed the group to the station, sneaked onto the train through the open door Qrow points out to Dee and Dudley, and was intending to take the train to Argus with the group and was waiting for a chance to get Blake alone. With the grimm attack derailing the train, Adam is taken to Argus with JNR, and presumably waits there for Blake to arrive. It is possible he is the reason for the technical issues Terra Cotta-Arc is being blamed for, but that is pure speculation and he could have been lying low for the day and a half it takes RWBY, Qrow, Oscar and Maria to arrive.

- Adam somehow becomes aware of the plan to steal an airship, or possibly follows the group to the cliffside, shadows Blake and Yang long enough to figure out where they are headed, and beats them there. Either way when Blake tries to disrupt the comms tower, she finds all the staff murdered and Adam waiting for her. Adam admits he’s followed her, waiting for her to separate from the group. In this conversation/fight, he swings between bitterness that she ever entered his life at all, and swearing he’ll never let her go again. He is inconsistent with whether he wants Blake dead, or as a trophy.

- We get to see a wider scope of Adam’s fighting abilities in his battle against Blake and later Yang. He attempts to psychologically manipulate and intimidate both as well as physically fighting them. He refuses their attempts to defuse the situation, turning the scenario into life-or-death. When he is disarmed by Yang, rather than shoot one of them with the gun still on his belt, he instead dives for the broken Gambol Shroud, racing Blake. Blake and Yang prove faster – though there are a few minor placement issues here as well, with how far Adam is from the sword after catching his foot on it and taking two steps away, as well as how close his hand was to it in the shot before Blake seizes it – and is killed when both girls stab him with the broken pieces through the chest and back. He staggers to the cliff edge and falls, his body hitting the rocks before falling into the river below.

We hear about Adam via Blake more than we see him on screen. In order:

- Blake calls him a partner or mentor, who changed, and whose ideal world wasn’t perfect for everyone – i.e. humans. Given her descriptions of the White Fang to Weiss and her sketching Adam in her notebook as if she misses him, at this point in time it seems like Blake still thought Adam was misguided like the WF, forced to take drastic measures in the face of the racism espoused by humans like Weiss and Cardin, who called the White Fang pure evil and the Faunus animals respectively. However she still called him a monster for the actions he took, which made her run away. She later calls him someone very dear to her, and describes how he changed – gradually. Little choices that built up that he told her not to worry about; starting as accidents, then self defence, until even Blake was convinced he was right. We see one of these conversations in the short, where Adam has recently killed on a mission and Blake is calling him on it. Adam very quickly and easily turns the conversation around – placing the death as an unavoidable casualty of fighting, himself as the person willing to do what has to be done for the cause, and implying Blake wants him to abandon the Fang, ‘like her parents’. This changes the argument on Blake, leaving her to refute a claim she never made, give him support when he professes his fear she doesn’t believe in him anymore, and does not address the actual issue she brought up. Talking to Sun, Blake goes through her own changing perception of him – how he was justice, then passion, but she later saw him not as hatred or rage, but spite. ‘He won't accept equality, only suffering for what he feels the world did to him, and his way of thinking is dangerously contagious.’ The word ‘feels’ here is complicated, since we now know what the world did to him and it was genuinely horrific, but ‘feels’ implies that it is an imagined slight; something Adam has blown out of proportion. Blake later tells Yang that ‘he never really liked people telling him what to do.’ She says that he’s strong, but his real power comes from control – he would get into her head and make her feel small, which she now says was him pulling her down to his size (I mean he’s six foot four, so how tall was Blake to start off with?).

So that’s Adam in a recap. While the slow change Blake talks about isn’t shown much, we do see his continuing changes in the show – he does go from someone whose focus was Faunus revolution, to revenge against humanity and Blake, to believing only he can lead the Faunus – ironically echoing Blake, who thought she was the only one who could figure out the White Fang’s plans back in volume 2 – and murdering his mentor to do so, to abandoning the Faunus cause entirely when it becomes apparent that he is no longer in control of the White Fang, because Blake tarnished his reputation, and thus deciding to hunt her down to the exclusion of all else. We see his ambitions rise as his emotions spiral out of control, and it is emotions – so well contained in his first appearances – that get him killed when in his anger he forgets he has a gun on his belt and instead goes for a broken sword.

Adam is proven to be a horrible, violent person, even if he started out differently – something we don’t see directly as an audience; the closest we get is his silent moment of regret after his first murder. So how come so many people were invested in his character, when what we’ve seen of him has been so consistently bad and cruel?

Some people just like a good villain – which Adam was, when he had the complexity of both Faunus rights and going after Blake. A lot of people didn’t like the reveal he was an abuser in volume 3, preferring the revolutionary character who felt betrayed by a partner in a freedom fighting army, compared to the ex-boyfriend angry at the girl who left him and put that personal insult on an equal level with fighting for the rights of his entire species. Personally I didn’t mind the twist, though I do think they should have built it up a bit more prior to the reveal – Blake only expresses her discomfort at his treatment of humans and how violent he became in the White Fang raids before Beacon, and never implies he was abusive towards her. This of course could be her needing the distance and time to realise it, and the Fall of Beacon being the biggest wake-up call possible, but we don’t get any confirmation of that. Either way, I liked the volume 3 Adam. He not only thought he was fighting for his people, he had a personal stake in Blake’s story, and it was the level of threat he presented to Blake and the rest of the main cast that made him intriguing and something to look forward to, even though his actions were despicable. It was the conflict he offered that made him a character I liked. He presented not only a physical threat, but a philosophical one as well – because his methods got results. Blake’s didn’t – her parents already proved that.

But what about those who didn’t like that, who just wanted the revolutionary, and the student-mentor relationship between him and Blake? Or those who lost interest in Adam after volume 5, and only gained it back in 6 after his face reveal? From what I can see, a lot of it has to do with that reveal of the SDC scar on his face.

The SDC is well known for its atrocious working conditions and reliance on Faunus labour. As we discover in volume 6, they brand Faunus. This explains Adam’s ruthlessness in the SDC portions of his short and the Black trailer; he is striking back at the place that abused and marked him, even if the individuals he’s attacking had nothing to do with his personal trauma.

Now for all our speculation, we don’t know how or when Adam was branded. What we do know is the SDC branded a Faunus not only on his face, but over his eye, permanently disfiguring and blinding him on that side. Whether they practice slavery or not is not yet confirmed, though given the connotations of branding – like ranchers do to cattle – it is highly likely.

I’ve seen a few references to how in different parts of history, known criminals were often branded or permanently marked in some way or other so they’d be recognised, raising the possibility that Adam was branded after a botched raid on the company. However, in these historical instances where the marking was a part of the law, there was a set designation for the brand – for example, in ancient Rome marked robbers with ‘F’, and in Britain in the mid-1500s brawlers were branded with an ‘F’ for ‘fraymaker’. If Remnant’s punishment of criminals involves branding – something that has been largely abolished since the 1800s in our world – then they would not brand them with a company name.

Given Remnant is meant to be (very approximately) socially analogous to our so-called first world civilisations depending on what aspect you’re looking at, I highly doubt branding is an accepted legal punishment. That places the convention and the blame solely on the SDC – and if that is the case, then they have some very worrying analogues to branding in American slavery practices. Some would have a set logo they would use, others would use a basic hot iron and try to make a particular symbol or letter, as is the case of a Micajah Ricks, who when describing a runaway slave he was looking for, ‘burnt her with a hot iron, on the left side of her face, I tried to make the letter M’. Now we know that Remnant as a whole outlawed slavery back when the Vytal Treaty was signed 80 years before the show began, but that hasn’t stopped effective slavery continuing today in prisons and it still occurs in certain parts of the diamond trade today, so the SDC practicing slavery dressed up as employment - or hidden entirely - is not outside the realm of possibility.

If my speculation here is accurate, then what Adam’s face reveal tells us is that he was a slave, and was branded either to mark him as property, or for attempting to escape. We know the branding was done a long time ago as it seems fully healed, but we do not know how old Adam was when it occurred – if he was a child or not. We don’t have an official age for him, but if I recall Arryn and Barb estimated his age to be around 23 when volume 3 was airing or just finished, making him approximately 25 in volume 6. According to the NHS website entry on burns, ‘more severe and deeper burns can take months or even years to fully heal, and usually leave some visible scarring.’ Given the extent of Adam’s scarring, we know his was a deep burn, at least a third degree – and with how dark some of the discolouration is, it’s possible the deepest sections were fourth degree, which indicates tissue death. The site says that burns can be sensitive to direct sunlight for up to three years, though to take care to use factor 50 sunscreen on the burn and avoid direct midday sun as much as possible after this period as well. Even if Adam was branded after a failed raid with the White Fang, we seem him first don the mask in his character short back when Ghira was leader – five years or more before the show. If Adam was 23 during 3, he was either 23 or 22 at the start of Volume 1, not counting the trailers where he was likely 22. Five years before volume 1 would make him 18. Assuming the Adam short opening was after the burn had fully healed – I’m taking three years healing period here as a ballpark – he would have been 15 at the oldest when he was branded.

Now this speculation is based off assumptions, since all we know about Adam’s backstory is that he was branded by the SDC. That’s it. But I hope that this speculation is at least reasonable and rational, and backed up with enough evidence to at least be plausible. So if you’re still with me this far, we have either a child or a teenager being branded on his face for either criminal activity – and given Ghira was peaceful and did not condone Sienna’s later tactics, it’s doubtful Adam was working for the White Fang if this brand was because of a crime – or because he was a slave, who may have tried to escape.

And people wonder why anyone has even a shred of sympathy for the character.

Seriously though, the scar reveal makes all of Adam’s actions against humanity understandable, if not justifiable. The revolutionary people liked at the start received more backing and rationale for his actions, and even some of Adam’s more ambitious and villainous actions started to make sense – his coup against Sienna, for example. Adam had become so twisted by his hatred of humanity that a partnership he was initially forced into at fire-point became, in his mind, the best chance he had to get revenge on humanity – and Sienna wasn’t on board with that alliance or their actions, so he justified her murder as the Faunus needing him instead of her, because only he could bring them the justice they deserved.

The scar was also when a lot of people started raising the possibility of a redemption arc. Now the desire had been there before, since the very beginning in fact. But this was when it started looking like a genuine possibility, with the knowledge that the team were heading to Atlas, the source of Adam’s abuse, next. I know when I saw the reveal, my fears they were going to kill him off this season were eased a bit – surely this was setting up a future plot point? Why make the brand SDC if it wasn’t; any other brand – simple numbers even – would have conveyed the same story and had the same impact, without making it look like Adam would be a part of the future story.

And yes, I said ‘this season’. Adam I feel was always going to die, and a lot of his fans were fine with that. What we have issue with is the execution (no pun intended) of his death – something lots of people have already covered. What I want to focus on is the reason ‘redemption’ was bandied about as a possibility.

Now, let me clarify what I mean by redemption. I think when people see the word they think what we wanted was Adam to become good, to have his sins forgiven and to become a hero in reality and not just in his mind, to team up with RWBY and go up against Salem, potentially going down saving Blake as a last act of goodwill, or surviving to lead the White Fang and Faunus properly.

That’s not what I wanted. That’s not what most of us wanted.

When a lot of the Adam fans I’ve talked to mentioned ‘redemption’, there were two things we wanted. One was for the writers to redeem their bad handling of him (and everything else) in volume 5. Of particular note is how sudden the change is in his character between 3 and his first ‘live’ appearance after becoming High Leader as the holo-message to the Albains. The only scene between the two is his coup against Sienna, where his ambitions and ruthless rationale become clear, along with how content he is with his deal with Salem, but where - like in 3 - he is overwhelmingly in control. Sienna was already overthrown before that scene even starts, she (and the audience) just doesn’t realise it. Yet the next scene we have of Adam, he’s screaming in fury - and this isn’t the raised voice of Heroes and Monsters, where he tells Blake ‘what you want is impossible’. This is an uncontrolled emotion that he visibly has to fight to rein in - compounded by Fennec’s comment that ‘he seems unwell’. With that one line, Adam’s character is changed - he is now unstable when prior to this scene, he was one of the most collected characters on the show, even in the face of defiance from both Blake and Sienna. A lot of people see this scene as the beginning of the end, if not the outright death, of Adam’s character.

By and large the writers managed to claw back Adam’s respectability in 6, with the exception of how he died - it being that instability and emotional lack of control that got him killed. The other thing Adam fans wanted when discussing redemption was for Adam to find balance again as a villain. Let him be a threat. Let him be terrifying. But don’t let his existence revolve around Blake, especially now we’ve seen his face and know what his original motivations were. If she gets in his way in his pursuit of justice, great. He’ll go after her and her loved ones. But he won’t go out of his way to do so. His desire to elevate the Faunus should have stayed strong. Yes, some people wanted Adam to forget Blake entirely and just focus on helping the Faunus, but I feel that would have been too big a reversal for his character. Adam is a villain, and the vast majority of us don’t mind that. We like that; it’s one of his selling points. He’s one of the most effective ones in the show (again, ignoring volume 5 where everyone became an idiot, hero and villain alike).

We all know Cinder is evil and is totally remorseless about the Fall of Beacon and the lives lost, same as Adam. We know she has a personal grudge against one of the main characters, and wants to kill or severely harm them, again, same as Adam. We know both want power. And when they divert from their original purpose, it is to get revenge on a member of the main cast. The difference? Adam succeeds. He helps destroy Beacon. He provides a direct threat to two of the main cast. Even in the weakest volume, he becomes the leader of the White Fang and would have succeeded in blowing up Haven had Blake not had prior warning of his plan and turned up to stop him – Team RWBY had no idea he was there or what his plan was; if Cinder and co’s plan had gone as they thought it would (so Vernal was actually the Spring Maiden) I imagine after killing Ruby and Qrow and securing the relic, their plan would have been to use Raven to teleport out before Adam detonated the bombs. When Adam abandons the White Fang, he finds Blake within a few days to two weeks and stalks her until he gets the chance to confront her. Cinder is responsible for the Fall of Beacon, but when presented with the chance to get revenge on Ruby, the character she’s been murdering illusions of since Beacon, she goes after Jaune instead (and fails to kill anyone except Vernal). Cinder gains the full Maiden powers, yes, but almost immediately loses her social power amongst Salem’s group when she’s maimed by a fifteen year old and does not gain that power or influence back. She is ostracised from Salem’s group because of her failure at Haven, leaving her a vagabond having to murder and steal for money and clothes to try and buy information – on Ruby. Yet Cinder never comes into contact with Ruby all season.

This is one of the reasons why Adam is more compelling – though I won’t say likable – than Cinder. The other is we actually have a glimpse of his backstory supporting his goals, unlike Cinder who could have popped up fully formed watching Emerald steal and we’d be none the wiser.

It is also why most of us were fine with Adam dying. He’s a villain, and villains tend to die and deserve it. It’s the way he died, and the timing, that annoyed us and sparked this whole month-long debate. A lot of our complaints could probably have been averted if a) the scar had said anything other than SDC, b) if he’d not forgotten about his gun OR he’d forgotten about it earlier in the match to foreshadow his lapse in concentration later, and c) Yang’s line about who he was pretending to be. It’s a good line, don’t get me wrong, but it does not make sense for Yang to say it. If Blake had said it, it would have worked and given us more insight into Adam – that he’d changed far earlier than we first though, and kept the facade going to keep Blake sweet. But Yang doesn’t know him. She knows very little about him, and she and Blake have had one very short conversation about him since Beacon, during which Blake never implies that Adam was pretending to be better than he was. If the line had been ‘the person you used to be’, then fine, great, that works perfectly because it’s consistent with the knowledge Yang has of him.

There’s also the group that say Blake and Yang murdered him, and it wasn’t self-defence. I’ll be honest, I’m on the fence. Did they have other options, once he was disarmed? Yeah, probably. His aura was broken and Yang, a hand-to-hand fighter, was behind him. She could have sucker punched him and knocked him out rather than slowing down to pick up a broken sword to stab him with. Did they feel like they had those options, in the moment, after giving him several chances to walk away and he was diving for a weapon? Probably not. Would I have preferred to see a scene where (if they had to kill him now) there was zero ambiguity? Yes. However the writers made their choice, and we’ll have to see what they do moving forward. I won’t be dropping the show or boycotting or anything like that, but I am disappointed in their handling of it, especially when the finale was so lacklustre. They should have saved the Adam fight for the final episode, if only to give us the emotional stakes completely lacking in the Cordovin fight.

Speaking of moving forward, I would like to see the death have an impact in the next volume. There wasn’t much time in the finale for an in-depth look at Blake and Yang’s emotional state, but this is something that should be explored in volume 7. Killing a human is different to killing Grimm, and while team RWBY have been guilty of endangering or ending lives before (hi nameless White Fang goons on the exploding train!) the narrative has never addressed it, and I feel this is a good place to. Adam wasn’t just a faceless, nameless enemy who you didn’t directly kill, even if you left them to the Grimm or they got caught in an explosion you survived. He was Blake’s mentor, partner, lover, and nightmare, and she killed him with her own hands. He was only ever a monster to Yang, one who changed her life forever and haunted her ever since, but he was a person and she killed him and saw how devastated Blake was afterwards. Blake had an emotional breakdown in the immediate aftermath, but this was used to reinforce her relationship with Yang instead of explore her complex relationship with Adam in its final moments, and I feel like one scene where only one of the two characters is upset over what they did is not enough to cover a subject that should be quite deep and managed tactfully.

All we can do is hope that the writers do well next volume, and given how strong the majority of volume 6 was I think they will. They’ve shown their willingness to take feedback on board, and while nothing else can be done with Adam’s character (unless as Kerry says they decide to pull a Darth Maul), I hope they do the impact he’s had on the characters justice and we get to see a more in-depth look at the conditions that made him who he was: a warped, broken man who was a victim, a survivor, but who took the wrong path and became a villain.

Edits: Included a couple of points thanks to a friend on Discord and @blek-is-a-cat, thanks to you both!

#rwby #adam taurus #rwby spoilers #rwby 6 spoilers #seeing red spoilers #seeing red #rwby analysis

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we-future-first · 4 years

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Just really needed to get this theory out there, nature is way more resilient and adaptive than we think

I've had this cool theory for a while which I personally hold true but I'm sure most of you will say is far fetched.

I personally believe that nature is far more adaptable, dynamicly resilient and powerful than we as a society believe. I can't seem to find any articles on the topic because everyone is jaded by the belief that humanity's destruction and eradication of life on earth will bring a collapse to the natural world. This is what I believe is wrong, as we intently destroy the global ecosystem on an unprecedented scale, the overall gene pool of life as a mass will begin to be forced to select for traits that are effective in reducing humanity's stresses and impacts for it's own survival. Many species are evolving to, or are being manipulated into cooperating with humans. But I believe many more species are evolving to directly or indirectly weaken and destroy mankind.

Simply put, life on Earth has constantly evolved and adapted to thrive even through absolute destruction and percievably impossible scenarios. The fact that life came to exist from the most coincidental and bizarre circumstances and has not gone away proves the incredible resilience it holds. We as humans are now constantly destroying and eradicating, forcing nature into extremes to ensure its own survival.

Remember that by nature I mean all cellular and non-cellular life on earth except humanity. Plants, animals, fungi, pathogens, bacteria and everything in between. Particularly I emphasise on microscopic life such as viruses, bacterial and pathogens as these are the fastest to evolve and are thus the most adaptive and resilient of all. Humanity's extortion and destruction is often forcing species to have as profound an impact on humanities prosperity and inevitable survival as possible. The rapidly exponential rate at which life is beginning to cohesively 'jepoardise' humanities prosperity will also be forced to essentially co-operate against mankind and form dynamic direct or indirect systems which make human life more difficult.

Life will constantly try to restore the natural equilibrium that existed before the Anthropocene (human epoch), destroy humankind's existence entirely or force humankind into creating this natural equilibrium which would likely result in various systems of human population control.

I know what many of you are thinking, your probably that humankind possesses the ability to and is essentially acting to destroy the Earth and all life on it. But I simply do not believe we are yet capable of, or never will be capable of destroying life on earth entirely. Not to say if we really tried to say blow the world up by using all nuclear power on earth to creat an exlosion that somehow could break the world in two, of manipulated the trajectory of a meteorite or space Phenomena of some kind to literally disintegrate or split the earth into pieces (with the potential survival of life within the vacuum of space forced to cling in). I simply do not believe we are yet capable or even ever will be capable of the Earth's destruction, mother Earth will likely bring us down first. I f every nuclear warhead on earth were to simultaneously be detonated, extremely catastrophic mass extinction would likely entale and the majority of life will perish. However just as life came to be here life will always remain on earth, and there will always be outliers, enclave, mutated and biologically resistant life that will then flourish and prosper in a new environment with very little competition. In fact the 'eternal' nuclear fallout would dramatically increase the rate of mutation in genetics and life would raidly evolve into a terrifyingly dynamic new reality, or some fungi will just evolve to rapidly detox and irradiate the earth returning it to normal 😂

Now to get back to the point I'm making, humanity must either universally co-operate with the natural world. Or be forced into a position where they are no longer the dominant species. Another species will also likely evolve to be sentient and compete with humanity in a geographically short time period, with many more to follow.

This may all seem like jibber jabber to some of you, it seems that our society's ego has us believe that we are better than nature. We often believe we are not animals and we are so advanced that we have the ability to prosper through anything nature throws at us. But this is simply untrue and mother nature will grab humanity by the balls when she wants to, and her grip is getting tighter.

I don't have any degrees, in fact I don't even have any sources to quote here. There is no reason for you to agree with me, any and all argumant or rebuttal will be great and I would love for someone to raise a point that makes my theory obsolete. I could go on about this with many more intricate predictive theories on the topic, but I have so many more ideas and theories I just need to get out of my head.

Nah, I got a couple other thoughts on this as well. Nature's manipulation of hamnkind may even be completely indirect, we may never now how the natural world can impact our psyche and may simply create an extreme tendency for society to be extremely unstable. The DNA that codes our life may likely select for genes that encourage humans to fight each other as a form of population control, and this may be how an equilibrium could be established. Overpopulation will likely lead to conflict, famine, diseases and all as nature will and always has been thriving for a world of diversity and cohabitation. The environmental recovery caused by the global impact of covid-19 is a great example of how nature indirectly works together against us. Since animals that transmit diseases will often prosper through the lessened impact of humanity in their own lives. Species that can transmit viruses directly or indirectly to humans, will likely thrive, thus selecting for genes which directly or indirectly cause human habitation within their environment to decrease or desist. This will likely lead to a world where animals evolve purely to kill humans, the outcome in only a couple millenia will be scary af.

The problem I see is not animals or plants though, it's pathogens and all the microscopic stuff. When the environment benefits from a virus that impairs humanitys impact, many others will naturally begin to evolve to the benefit of other species in this ecosystem, and diseases will do this first. Viruses and bacteria are of particular concern here since they or the most rapid to evolve and adapt to a change in their environment. Zoonotic viruses that rapidly immobilise humans will have significant benefits to their hosts and ecosystems they are within thus zoonotic viruses that can infect humans will likely be the first step in Earth establishing an equilibrium.

If overpopulation is somehow rapidly addressed this would probably significantly reduce the rate at which this 'theoretical bullshit' may happen. Realised I forgot to mention why I don't have faith in our sciences or doctors to fight spontaneous natural occuring diseases. Viruses/bacteria/pathogens all that, have n essentially infinite ability to evolve, gain resistances and become immune or more severe. It is commonly known that most viruses do not want to kill their hosts, but when the entire global ecosystem benefits from a virus killing it's host, those viruses will begin to occur far more frequently and likely with increasing severity. Sorry if this is scary for you somehow as long as you are young and healthy you will probably be fine but I can't say much about the outcome of a likely upcoming war of significant proportion, likely fought very unconventionally.

TLDR and a lil conclusion: Nature is powerful as heck, in the end we are just another species on this planet and through all the great things we have and will achieve, mother Earth will be able to keep us in check. I don't understand why I am unable to find articles on this, mass extinction does not simply cause life as a whole to perish, it strengthens the gene pool, and by impacting essentially all species of life on Earth; we are essentially creating our own undoing. Overpopulation will likely trigger the most significant mechanisms of 'human eridication'. You can say I'm just a doomsday theorist or something but this will not happen in a couple of years, I believe it has been ongoing ince we first discovered fire and is now taking a drastic step in its inevitable fate. Also not sure if I even mentioned global warming, but the extreme loss and extinction caused by this will likely be short lived, most ecosystems will eventually benefit from Increased temperatures with a global increase in rainfall and water available for evaporation. Fungi and other live organisms will likely evolve systems to reduce harmful gases and elements in the ground and air (as they already do) and filter out the 'toxins'.

I also just want to say that every opinion is biased somehow, of course this for example, but even the most credible articles and studies from prestigious universities or organisations. Simply by thinking that we as humans are top shit, the short term impact of our actions/activities blind us in our judgement of the long term outcome. Nature finds a way, always will and always has, we don't know why or how this occured, but it has clearly proven to be terrifyingly powerful and resilient.

Humanity must lose its ego, we might look like top shit right now but some day or another we will be put in our place. Mother nature is patiently waiting to bitch slap us back into our caves, and it kinda seems that no-one wants to talk about this? Also yes, this is something I thought about on a mushroom trip, but I've formulated the other ideas since. WAKE UP SHEEPLEZ nah jk kidding there's nothing we can do lmao😅

submitted by /u/mrunk0 [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/hy2tvz/just_really_needed_to_get_this_theory_out_there/

#Future #Futuristic #Future oriented

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