(account deleted) 27 Dec 2016 22:14
Repost from the Christmas Gift Exchange for Kalinin. Thanks to Scantron, Roget, Silber, TyGently, vezaz, and AbsentmindedNihilist for looking this over. Based on a thing that actually happened.
Cleon / Discussion
This is the discussion related to the wiki page Cleon.
(account deleted) 27 Dec 2016 22:14
The pacing here is absolutely superb, and I think this incredibly enriches what's already one of the best and most detailed canons on the site.
I posted a series of vignettes on my sandbox several weeks ago called 'Cleon: a Subcommittee of Project Argus.' Thematically appropriate, given that it was about anomalous political groups, and Cleon was an Athenian statesman. Not sure what he has to do with art, precisely.
Now I guess I've got to change the damned thing's name. Okay.
In-universe, there's no real connection between Cleon and art, which is sort of the point. If someone is looking at project names and sees "Project Awesome Art" or "Project Pygmalion," it would be a reasonable leap to think it had something to do with art. But "Cleon" doesn't give the hypothetical spy anything to go on.
Out-of-universe, I was reading The History of the Peloponnesian War when I wrote this, and liked the name, if not the person, of Cleon. Plus, the U.S. government has a history of doing shady things under the guise of two-syllable Greek names.
Thanks for the patronizing exposition, but I was already aware of Operation Ajax. So it's purely a coincidence that you took the name of an obscure Athenian demagogue as a title for a piece just a few weeks after I posted something with the same title on my sandbox? Helluva thing.
But nevermind. I'll rename my piece. Wouldn't want anyone thinking I ripped off your oh-so-clever title.
So it's purely a coincidence that you took the name of an obscure Athenian demagogue as a title for a piece just a few weeks after I posted something with the same title on my sandbox?
Just so we're clear, you're insinuating that I read your piece, then stole your title, waiting for over a month to do so, for the purposes of… what, precisely? Fucking over a person I barely even knew? Getting those sweet, sweet upvotes from the three people on the wiki who would even care about the name Cleon?
And yes, it is a coincidence. I know that I read some things that you posted on the forums, but I don't remember anything specific about them, least of all the titles.
Your response is dripping with unnecessary sarcasm and vitriol. Some of us have never heard of Operation Ajax, and thus appreciate Gaffney's sincere, interesting explanation.
But more importantly, guess what - you snooze you lose. So somebody posted a piece with a similar name as yours. That happens. One of my friends had to change the name of an upcoming piece of his from "Katabasis" after it was taken Why would Gaffney waste his time trolling anyone's sandbox for cool Greek names? Suck it up. Don't be so passive-aggressive, and certainly don't blame your sloth on Gaffney.
I don't know if this was intentional, but the last part reminded me of the period early in the Cold War when the CIA funded international exhibitions of modern art. There are explanations of varying degrees of cynicism for why this happened. My favorite is that non-representational art is less useful for propaganda purposes, so supporting abstract expressionism reduced the threat of esthetic subversion.
I love when real world politics and espionage get a rich anomalous filling, and this one is particularly savory.
Okay, those vignettes had some excellent imagery. But I was just as confused about what was going on as the people featured in them, which I guess was the intention of the piece? Either way, the document excerpt at the end gave some great insight to some otherwise confusing entries. Very well done.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
