crystalelemental

[crystalelemental]

Book Talks - Stamped From The Beginning

Quick one today, Ibram X Kendi's Stamped From the Beginning. Not short to read, mind, just a shorter talk this time. The book is 513 pages of history text, designed to showcase the genesis and evolution of racist ideas throughout primarily US history, with a bit of Europe in there for the genesis and development part. A lot of major takeaways from How To Be An Antiracist are echoed here, just more detailed, so I'll have less to say.

I think one of the funniest things is that my main complaint while reading the book is arguably its greatest strength. The book is incredibly repetitive. Which...yeah, that's to be expected. A lot of the same narratives get recycled over and over, and that's kinda the point, they're all interconnected and it's frustrating how they won't die despite the evidence mounting to the contrary.

This really reifies a central point of both books: that racist ideas exist to justify the atrocities of power. Slavery, segregation, and now mass incarceration all produce sources of power and revenue for those at the top, and the justification of racial disparities is concocted to perpetrate these actions. What's really distressing is how many times you see this push forward, only for the reaction to be overwhelming violence from white males. I think my favorite showcasing of the effects of gathering power to antiracist activity was during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, where he talks about a major factor that got everything done was the Cold War making the US look really bad as the self-identified center of freedom in the world. Unable to quell the protests and rising discontent of the era in a way that didn't get our political opponents talking about it, the decision was made to enact changes more to quiet things down. Which...is also really distressing.

I don't have a ton to add to this. Maybe it's because history can be really depressing. But he does end on a relatively positive note, discussing that activism in the modern age has to look at what's never worked before: uplift suasion (if the disparaged group all acts perfectly the racists will stop being racist) and educational persuasion (we can educate people into not being racist). Which I think is good advice. From my own experience, I had a speech at a recent event where I responded to someone's talk about ignorance with "I don't think the problem is ignorance. Ignorance is just stuff you don't know. The problem is a fundamental difference of values, with one side earnestly believing in equality, and the other holding to a sense that some are better than others." Thematically, this book seems to take a similar perspective, but instead of the focus on believing in inequality, it focuses on power holding to power.

Critically, he also showcases that these racist policies tend to be pretty bad for white poor people, but that the powerful will often accumulate support by presenting poor whites with a better position than other minorities, and this sways them into agreement instead of the even better deal of eliminating barriers to oppression.

Anyway, it is really good, but it is also a history textbook. So it's long, dense, and dry. Recommended for people who like that sort of thing, otherwise I think How To Be An Antiracist gives the bullet points and functional outcomes much more succinctly.

[crystalelemental]

Think we’ll be getting another recolor unit this year like we got with Lillie? Other than the Paldea group, I mean.

Maybe? I actually can't remember if we get a free unit every anniversary, but it'd be nice.

[crystalelemental]

If we're talking facility heads, then they're almost certainly going to focus on the remaining Frontier Brains, meaning Brandon, Spenser, and Tucker. And since the Chatelaines exclusively draw from their rematch teams, I imagine they will too. Flying Zapdos works well for Brandon, especially since the Regis are off-limits now. I think Spenser gets Suicune, so that might work? And Tucker gets Dragon Latias (if I had a nickel for... fuck it, you know the meme).

Actually, you know what? They might as well start giving us 4-star Chatelaine pairs now, since half the reason the BP shop was implemented in the first place was to add them to the game without losing multiple millions on their banners!

I do expect at least one Paldea pair. I'd say we're looking at Rika and Camerupt, since most of that cast got something fairly recently.

I didn’t think they’d add Paldea because that would involve giving a free Paldea pair. Land of Eternal PokeFairs would never.

[crystalelemental]

There's a battle in the new Academy event with Juliana, and she uses Sprigatito. Now she's definitely the canon Paldea protag, given Florian's whole deal and all, and protags do get paired with multiple starters (hell, Gloria has all three!), so this doesn't mean much, but I'd still like to revise my Tera starters theory: Dark Meowscarada for Juliana, Fighting Quaquaval for Nemona, and Ghost Skeledirge for Florian.

I wanted to argue this wouldn’t happen because they tend to go toward the signature move, but Kieran has a Dragon move randomly and no Syrup Bomb on his kit, so fuck it maybe it will be those three.

[crystalelemental]

Happy Birthday to Elise!!!🍇🍇

[crystalelemental]

So, any particular BP pairs you're hoping for? Obviously they're not gonna be meta, but any particular Pokemon you want a certain Trainer to get? I'd like to see Glacia finally get her Walrein, maybe Archie and Sharpedo since they put villains on the table for BP last year? One of Kiawe/Talonflame or Mallow/Trevenant would be neat now that Lana has her full team. I guess we do need at least one Gym Leader, so... Clair and Gyarados?

Roxanne and Golem remains something they desperately need to include. She's so overdue. I think they should do Lysandre if they do antagonists, give him Pyroar. I think they should add Chuck for funsies, we always need more Johto and Chuck's never getting anything nice, so this is a compromise; maybe with Primeape? And...hmm. Maybe a rival. Is there a BP Shauna yet? I don't think so. Get that girl a Goodra.

As for the Master BP pairs, I'd personally like to see them take on the other major Battle facility heads now that the Maison sisters are complete. I'd like to see the Sinnoh Frontier get alts. Darach and Entei would've been a fun one, but since they've yet to double up on types...Houndoom with Dark? That leaves future options for Palmer with Dragonite for Dragon, Dahlia with Zapdos for Flying, Thorton with Suicune for Water, and Argenta filling in whatever type she wants. MC could take any of the Tapu as a Fairy type focus.

[crystalelemental]

"thevoidbunny: How’s it feel to be to have the most correct opinions ever".

Careful. Statements like that will 100% go to my head. But yes, I am aware. I'm just glad others can see my brilliance.

[crystalelemental]

sometimes tiktok is actually incredibly good

[crystalelemental]

[crystalelemental]

"thevoidbunny: https://www.tumblr.com/sugarsweets9987/791780909065158656/overrated-sync-pair-bracket-poll-8 here’s the link to one of them, they should all be on this blog"

Alright, let's do this. They don't seem to really define overrated in specific terms, but they present the number of alts each character has, so I'm assuming this is about the character themselves? But that's also boring, so I'm going to talk about the alts themselves, too, and whether they're good sync pairs. Going backwards through the list:

Round 8: Elesa vs Morty By sync pair performance, I think Morty's considered pretty mid across everything except his Sygna Suit, which was largely disparaged until people found out that no, actually he does hold up as an incredible pair. Elesa, by contrast, gets a lot of attention despite also mostly being mid. So Elesa's the more overrated on performance. By character...it's also Elesa. Look, she's fine, but when I play Gen 5, she doesn't exactly stand out. I think Masters gave her more personality than she had. Morty's alt total is disproportionate to his overall popularity, but that's more because Johto doesn't get any respect, so who else do they have to work with? I personally think that he at least has some structure to what he does, which is more interesting than Elesa. So I'm voting Elesa. This is apparently consensus (77.3% agree).

Round 7: Rosa vs May Barring her Champion alt, Rosa sucks. May's alts are generally excellent at time of release. May actually holds up under scrutiny as effective, while Rosa is pretty consistently recognized as middling. So I don't think either is strictly overrated as sync pairs. In terms of their character, I think it's May and not even close. Rosa got the "first 5* free pair" thing, which I think people interpret as high popularity, but that kind of designation is a death sentence. Outside of her first alt, it also took Rosa years to get another alt, while May gets them with consistency. Moreover, I think Hoenn's cast is generally more interesting than it's given credit for, and thus May's high alt count despite Hoenn's low representation feels a lot more frustrating than Rosa's high alt count with Unova being one of the most represented regions and good general coverage of characters. So I'm voting May. I am apparently in the minority (43.8% agree).

Round 6: N vs Leon N. We're done here. I'm not going to spend much time on this: N isn't particularly interesting as a character to begin with, I don't really like the guy. His sync pairs are also treated ridiculously. Even the ones that come out kinda bad at first, they've gone out of their way to power up as much as humanly possible. Leon's consistently decent, but I've never seen a single alt of his come out and be top dog in its field. It's always just kinda fine. It's N, easy. Astoundingly, the people agree (81.6% agree).

Round 5: Lillie vs Dawn Lillie's going to be rated higher, guaranteed. However, I think this is a close one. Both have sets of sync pairs that are largely whatever, and seem to be recognized as such. But I think Lillie's character popularity is wholly justified, as Aether Fam is the only interesting part of Gen 7. Dawn is in Sinnoh, which...I want to say should have more variety in character appearances, but also I don't actually love the gym leaders of Sinnoh all that much. So barring Cynthia, I can't say there are many others I'd recommend over Dawn. It doesn't help that I really like what they did with Dawn, giving her the Sygna Suit that talks about how she wants to specifically be a prince. I kinda lean Dawn solely because she is, ultimately, a protagonist. And I do not align to the general protagonist popularity the game has. So I'm saying Dawn. It is exactly even (50%). Astounding.

Round 4: Steven vs Iono But they're both great. Iono has wonderful streamer gremlin energy, and Steven is our delightful autistic rock man. I can't even say Steven's alts are a deciding factor, because until his Sygna Suit, everyone knew his alts were ass. It's also impossible to rule on his consistency, because Iono's recent and has five alts already. Which I think is the scale tipping factor. I know, Paldea is on the back foot, she's decisively really popular, but correct me if I'm wrong: no one else with comparable popularity has this many from Paldea, and other big names like Brassius aren't even in yet. So I'm say Iono by regional comparison. I am apparently the minority (33.3% agree).

Round 3: Cynthia vs Red It's Red. I'm not even dignifying this with discussion, if you disagree you're an idiot. 57.1% of poll responders are dumb as fuck. He doesn't even say anything!

Round 2: Blue vs Giovanni Giovanni, full stop. The man is the single most overrated character in the series aside from Red. Constantly built up as the biggest most evilest man alive, but his plans are stupid and he's given wildly disproportionate significance all the goddamned time. I am somehow in the minority (33.3% agree). Blue has an actual character arc, how the hell is he losing?

Round 1: Marnie vs Silver Another slam dunk, because Marnie sucks. A rival who is so benign and non-confrontational that she exudes nothing. All interesting aspects of her character are better performed by her brother, who at least has a sense of ethics and honor and a real goal for his city. Meanwhile Silver is the most complex character of his era, and remains such despite 20 years of expanding story and dialogue that never managed to really create more complex rivalries. I am, predictably, the minority (40% agree).

Final Thoughts The last five were really interesting, but the first three were really easy with predictably annoying results. Anything to do with Kanto is going to be ridiculously biased in its favor, and apparently the same is true of Galar rivals for some reason.

[crystalelemental]

FEH added the division symbol to the weapons it’s so Fire Emblover

It really does seem dire. Three stillshots to show just the bare description of skills, literal algebraic equations to determine stats, whatever the Emblem units are on. I haven't thoroughly read a skill since I came back. There's just no point.

But like. It's been this bad since forever. It still survived. The real thing making me think the game's about to finally tank is the CYL results. The outright winner had 11k votes. Back when I was active, Edelgard won with 72k. The numbers have been dwindling for a long time, but this is catastrophically low. I've heard their total revenue isn't doing so well either. I imagine it will continue to squeeze some time out of the whales, but it's definitely not in a healthy position.

[crystalelemental]

Theres a overrated sync pair bracket going on and I’d love to see your take on it

Whereabouts? Because as we all I know, I have Many Opinions.

[crystalelemental]

sun wukong

[crystalelemental]

Fire Emblem Heroes introducing a Brave character in Book 9 whose gimmick ability is changing color for weapon triangle advantage when that shit hasn't mattered since 2018 is one of the series' top 10 funniest decisions.

[crystalelemental]

Okay this is really funny, actually. You can’t go for walks in the Pokemon universe because everyone will want to battle.

[crystalelemental]

this is what having sex with sonic the hedgehog sounds like btw

[crystalelemental]

This is why I consider BW2 to be the first games of the modern Pokemon multiverse. Up to that point, third versions were the definitive core series canon, and with paired sequels following the new generation, what is even canon anymore?

I don't think there ever was canon. This nonsense of them all being truly, perfectly interconnected is similar to the whole Unified Zelda Timeline thing. It's made up.