Throwback Prompt: The Dragon's Corpse

The smell had grown tolerable, a fact which itself was terrifying.

The town-witches had told us that a dragon was a thing of poison, black-earth-bile. The serpent the ground spat up. The stench had confirmed what had probably been their best guess; monsters were previously just stories.

They—not the town-witches, but just folk—said that dragons were born from the atrocities of men. That’s why they could come up full-grown, wise, hateful. Their voices were supposedly the combined chant of a crime’s victims, and when I heard Da’s voice among the multitude as the blight hunkered over our little Middleland town I knew it was the war that’d done it.

They say every dragon must meet the cleansing fire of a hero’s sword, though for that trivia we have no confirmation. Disproof, really: I’ve never seen a hero, but I’ve seen a dragon die.

On (But Not Really About) The Republic: My Thoughts on Justice

I want to begin by defining justice as I see it, independent of what I’ve picked up from Plato. For me, justice is about consistency of thought and action. Maybe it was all of the Louis L’Amour westerns my grandpa read to me when I was little, but I always saw the just man as the one that operated very strictly upon his particular moral code. What that moral code is becomes a subjective matter; I don’t think (as Plato seems to) that there is an objective or natural “right” that allows for a universal, homogeneous justice. Rather than virtue (as in, good) as a rule, I see justice as an operation of virtue: The objective operation of a subjective notion of what is good. Of note too is the way that Plato uses the word virtue to mean the particular excellence of a thing; I think that this definition still holds, though human beings have to articulate for themselves who they wish to be and therefore what their excellence is.

The early definitions from Socrates’s companions serve as an effective comparative tool for my version of justice. We first discussed “truth-telling and paying what is owed,” and these are parts of justice. In the first place, you must determine what is true as a basis for the virtue that you will uphold, and then you must maintain truth in your words and actions. Paying what is owed is more accurately “responding with what is deserved.” If someone’s actions conflict or mire what you know to be true, you mustn’t reward them. If they are acting on your behalf (if you are responsible for them and their actions), you have to reprimand them appropriately.

This begins to get into “benefiting friends and harming enemies,” but justice isn’t so simple. In terms of justice, I think a friend is someone whose own notion of virtue is (mostly)  consistent with your own, while an enemy is the opposite. If their cause is just (upon your standard), you should aid your friends and at the very least stand aside for your enemies. If their cause is unjust or would harm a friend, you should oppose any party.

In a free society and under this definition of “friend,” I think that the concept of justice as “the advantage of the stronger” actually holds. For a democracy especially, the “stronger” is the majority, which could be thought of as the collective of individuals whose notions of justice are consistent enough that they might work together and operate peacefully (i.e., with limited need to personally pay what is owed, punish enemies, or protect friends) in a society. Justice, for the collective and the community, becomes a code of laws, which would ideally be a code of popular virtue or truth. It is to the advantage of the “stronger” community that these laws are upheld, because society then represents the least contradiction for the most typical citizen. Though it is also to the benefit of the “lesser” dissidents in some ways that a code of law exists, it is to their disadvantage that collective justice contradicts their personal virtue.

Which of Glaucon’s three kinds of good is justice? A fourth, I think: Justice for its own sake is on the one hand self-actualizing and therefore liberating (it feels good to do the right thing), but on the other it is oftentimes inconvenient in that you have a duty to act in ways you otherwise prefer not to. The effect of justice is good because you are furthering your virtue in the world, but it can be bad because of the inconsistency it creates between yourself and other individuals or all of society. Plato wants to make justice a simple thing, but it isn’t. Justice merely simplifies the complexity of virtue by keeping it mindful and consistent for each person.

Am I even talking about the same idea that Plato is when I define justice? Centuries in translation ensure that I am not. I tend to think his idea in broadest terms is that what is good (justice) is a product of how the world and people actually are (nature). But the nature of a person isn't inherent; culture and others factors play a role. There isn't a "good" that is best for everyone, but there might be a utilitarian good that makes the most people the most consistent within society. Philosopher-kings can't find that kind of good, though; it takes a society so structured as to allow everyone a voice.

Defiance: Neglecting Every Opportunity

I hate to begin this blogging venture on a negative note, but I caught the season finale of syfy's Defiance on Hulu last night, and I need to vent.  I try not to evaluate shows episode-by-episode; you never know when something off-putting in Episode X will make more sense in Episode X+n.  I can see the argument that television's base unit is the episode, so every episode must hold up, but I prefer to see each season as a whole narrative.  With great difficulty, I've held my tongue in criticizing Defiance.

I want to start by explaining my enthusiasm for this show.  From the moment I heard about it over at io9, I was sold.  The "game board" of the world setting was right up my alley, at my stoop, with a letter addressed as if it were my acceptance into Hogwarts.

Mr. Caminus, 
University Library Study Cage, 
Columbia, Missouri

A show could not have been more tailored for me if I'd produced and starred in it myself.  Let's go through the entire setting in one fat sentence:  A western-y outpost town atop the ruins of post-alien invasion and -terraform event St. Louis serves as home to surviving humans and several immigrant alien races as they struggle to get by while community and growing national politics cause pressure within and without.  So, yeah, that sounds spectacular.  I love political conflict.  If I were to call a city home, only Boston would rival St. Louis in my heart.  My love of science fiction is also well-documented.  This world in particular (and the fact that it's a big-budget endeavor by syfy) led me to hope for a mish-mash of Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, and Fallout.  I did not consider my hopes "high" relative to what I was being told; for someone to have such a great idea, they must have put as much thought into the rest of what goes into making a television show serviceable.

That assumption was a mistake.

I apologize in advance if my review devolves into sarcasm.  Unlike the plot of the show, my snark has been building all season.



I won't complain about the aliens, their design, or their makeup.  I have certain expectations going into a science fiction television program, and those expectations were adequately met.  The Castithans look at once noble, pallid, vivacious, and cold; it suits their cultural traits.  The Irathients straddle the line of being too cheap and common-looking for typical scifi "aliens," but there's also a kind of nightmare-ginger thing going on with them that makes me uncomfortable in a way that seems intentional.  The Indogenes and Liberata are my favorites, and they're sort of opposites.  The Indogene "golfball head" look reduces their range of expression, which makes sense, given their nature.  On the other hand, the Liberata are naturally expressive in appearance, which is good, considering they aren't too talkative. The rest are simply fine; no surprises or disappointments.


My problem with Defiance is simple: I can't for the life of me imagine that anyone involved in the writing of this thing cared.  I don't know how a person or a team can come up with such a great concept for a show and then simply neglect to be A) curious and B) aggressive in their exploration of that concept.  Rarely have I seen science fiction used to make every aspect of a narrative so dull and inconsequential.  Science fiction in Defiance is actively used to get away with not explaining or justifying the story, characters, or setting.


I won't attack the story in detail, in part because I find it hard to discuss particular events in the show as if they were important. It isn't a matter of the show being hard to follow so much as it is that I quickly learned that what happens won't have consequence.  Characters in this show do not learn things from their experiences.  Their actions are... I wouldn't say erratic, but they aren't always adequately justified.  Decisions and events don't occur in satisfying arcs; people show up when they're needed and not before.  The viewer is asked to grow to care or at least consider a new character in the first dozen minutes of an episode, synthesize a new revelation about that character in the next dozen, and be affected by that character's (generally inappropriate or unlikely) actions by the end.  The result, in the case of the Earth Republic, is that we encounter several inconsequential antagonists that could have been condensed into one recurring bad guy with whom we could have spent valuable time.  The Nicolette conspiracy worked a tad better in this regard, but her demise wasn't built up.  Her actions leading up to her death and Dr. Yewll's betrayal occur in the same episode with little time to breath.

One plot line that was given considerable time to develop, a story that spanned the season, was Irisa's magical ultimate alien spaceship goddess destiny. How do I convey my feelings about Irisa's story?  LAAAAAMMMEEE.  LAME.  Lame.  She had magic robot keys in her back, and the keys unlocked a ship, shown to her through visions, that has apparently been within the Earth since before the aliums came.  So, just a guess, the ship is aliums.  ANCIENT ALIUMS.  We hardly saw the ship, we weren't told its significance or origins, and it didn't do anything except save Nolan after he died five minutes prior.  So we got the spaceship this season but with no explanation and no holdover before Nolan's resurrection.

Another major plot was the romance of DJ The-Arch-Still-Has-Functioning-Elevators and Vanessa Hudgens-McCawley.  The whole affair was criticized as being archetypically Romeo and Juliet.  However, I found the plot grounding.  The Tarr family maneuverings were actually pretty cunning, and Rafe's responses to those maneuverings felt genuine.  I needed a relatively straightforward, heartfelt story as a glue for the show, and the romance did the job.

Overall, I have hope for Defiance's plottery.  We have characters going in new directions, and the political setup has potential.  Moreover, storytelling can be improved most easily relative to adding or revamping characters or modifying the environment, which both represent considerable hurdles for this show.


I can't forget that I'm comparing this show to science fiction's best, but I can't help it.  The concept was absolutely promising.  What we got was a big-budget video game tie-in.