#I made an arbitrary rule to not include any human characters in this

[neitherabaron]

Really looking forward to the Chris Pine D&D movie, and I want to share some love for the original attempt at a D&D film from 2000!

Make no mistake, this is a so-bad-it’s-good film, with digital effects that are ropey as hell (especially when you consider that Fellowship of the Ring was already in post-production in 2000), a plot so disjointed it barely exists, (including a final battle that the main characters don’t even really take part in) and staggering levels of camp.

But it’s fucking charming.

Jeremy Irons (Scar from The Lion King) is the villain, an evil archmage who wants to overthrow an (not particularly benevolent anyway) empire with a plan that is never really clear but involves dragons?

Just look at this guy:

:readmore:

He walks about like that for the whole film, waggling his fingers slowly so you know he’s the baddie. He has an office where all the furniture and decor is made of human skulls and bones (a real location; I believe it’s a church somewhere?) and likes swooping his cape about. And Jeremy Irons himself is so bored, it’s hilarious. I seem to remember that in the dvd extras he’s interviewed alongside Gary Gygax and pretty much expresses open disdain for the whole process. He’s a serious actor! This is beneath him!

Elsewhere on the supporting cast, we have a henchman with spiky armour and inexplicably blue lips that are always pouting in a way that seems vaguely sexual; Tom Baker(!) as a wood elf Druid who only exists in order to say something vaguely mystic about dragons for 20 seconds before disappearing forever; and Richard O’Brien in full fey bastard mode as a camp thieves’ guild master who challenges the party to…find a crystal…in a deadly maze filled with traps and puzzles. Like in that game show he used to present…I forget the name. I wanna say Diamond Labyrinth? 😂

As for the party, it’s all delightfully one-note characters. We’ve got a rogue? bard? who goes from being a selfish dickhead to altruistic freedom fighter on a dime. Some dialogue suggests he’s some kind of chosen one, but the plot never actually explores or resolves that. Then there’s a wizard who doesn’t like poor people, an elf fighter who doesn’t like anyone, a dwarf who’s so out of it he barely knows he’s there and is never given any character motivation to explain why he’s travelling with these guys; and some dude called Snails, whose personality is…he’s scared? Basically Shaggy without Scooby.

These guys have to save a princess from Jeremy Irons, who wants to kill her because she has friendly dragons or something. But here’s the great thing: the party have very little reason to want to rescue her (most of them as non-mages are actively oppressed and even enslaved by the ruling mage class of which she is the figurehead) and they never actually *meet* her until the very end of the film, after the evil archmage has pretty much already been defeated - by the princess and her dragons btw, not the party, who basically teleport a magic wand to her and then just watch.

They rescue her because in order for the film to be a film, there needs to be an end goal, even if it’s totally arbitrary. And that’s what I love. Isn’t that just so reflective of a slightly haphazard campaign of Dungeons & Dragons with a party that’s hastily thrown together?

And there are more similarities that compound this feeling of watching some randoms play a home campaign. The plot as I mentioned is disjointed. It’s not a series of events that flows or has any kind of pacing - the movie is a series of 15 minute adventures that don’t really connect to each other or build to the ending. As if the director is a dungeon master arbitrarily stringing together modular adventure sourcebooks! Let’s storm a castle for reasons! Great, now let’s raid a tomb. No, I don’t know why. At one point a party member just bounces from the plot and is never seen again, just like that player in your group who never shows up and you all just move on.

It’s like the writers transcribed a home campaign, warts and all, into script form and then somehow successfully pitched it as a B-movie. Though the Chris Pine version will doubtlessly be a much better movie, Dungeons & Dragons (2000) is perhaps the most accurate possible dramatic presentation of D&D as it actually is in practice for most people playing it. What could be more charming than that?

[phantom-le6]

Ramble of the month November 2022: Marvel Contest of Champions – Quarters, Semis and Finals of my fanfic-based clash of Marvel heroes

As promised in my October ramble, I’m using the November article to conclude the Contest of Champions I posited originally back in July’s ramble.  After two initial elimination rounds, we’re now down to the various varieties of final, and since that means four quarter finals, two semis and then a single final, I’m doing the whole lot in one post.

 Now as a quick reminder from last time for any regular readers, and to mention it for the first-time readers, this isn’t about arbitrary selection based on personal preference or telling a specific story.  Instead, I’ll be looking at things from an impartial examination of key factors.  These include powers and abilities, any weaponry/gadgets carried by default, perception biases and the fundamental nature of each character.  The analysis will also have some influence from the narrative outlines of my fan-fiction plans, so knowledge of events from any other Marvel continuities and their impacts aren’t going to factor in.  Also, as this would be the first contest, we’re looking at very basic knock-out fighting bouts between the heroes in plain, basic, gladiatorial arenas, so environment will mostly not be a factor either.

Right, now that that’s done, let’s hit the quarter-final bouts:

Quarter Finals

Bout 1: Black Panther/T’Challa vs Thor

Our first quarter final is a true battle royale as we pit the king of Wakanda against the prince of Asgard.  I’m sure Black Panther fans and people who’ve watched certain elements of season 5 of Avengers Assemble would put such a bout in T’Challa’s favour; one because he’s their favourite, the other because it provides a precedent for T’Challa planning contingencies against his fellow heroes.  However, the former is something we avoid in objective analysis, and the latter is ruled out by the contest rules (straight-up gladiatorial combat with no prep time) and the context for the fan-fiction universe (at this time, T’Challa hasn’t met or studied most other superheroes).

 As such, the contest is wide open until we consider all factors.  First, as ever, is powers; Thor significantly out-muscles T’Challa and brings a distance attack to the fray in the form of his lightning, not to mention his flight advantage.  However, T’Challa is also an agile opponent, so landing hits will not be entirely straight-forward for Thor.  Experience-wise, Thor’s extended lifespan means he’s had more time to learn and master combat than any human, so this adds to his edge over T’Challa.

 When we consider equipment, however, things even up a little more.  T’Challa’s suit being made of Vibranium means he’ll be more likely to absorb and even re-direct Thor’s lightning, which means the pair will be more likely to come to physical blows instead of fighting things out at range.  Psychologically, there’s nothing tipping the balance either way.  Long story short, it’s a closer bout than might be apparent at first glance, but without prep time, this bout will ultimately go to the God of Thunder.

Bout 1 winner: Thor

Bout 2: Captain America/Steve Rogers vs Storm/Ororo Monroe

Next, we pit the super-soldier against one of the last remaining X-Men-to-be in the contest (remember, Storm is at university following a stint as Xavier’s student before she returns as teacher and X-Men in the fanfic).  From a powers perspective, Storm has a considerable edge in that her weather-manipulation powers are varied, powerful, and are going up against the primarily physical power of Captain America.  Now as I noted back in my July ramble, Steve’s powers in the fanfic draw from the comics instead of films, so he’s only at peak human strength and fitness levels, but with the serum eliminated fatigue poisons to give him increased endurance and stamina.

 Considering this, Storm would have to rely on her more directly offensive weather manifestations, as trying to batter Cap with snow, wind, etc. isn’t going to wear him down as effectively as a normal human being.  However, that plays into Cap’s experience, which overall gives him an edge over Storm despite her Danger Room training.  To an old war horse like Cap, even tactics like fog wouldn’t avail Storm too much against him.  Next there’s the equipment aspect; Cap’s shield being made of a unique Adamantium-Vibranium alloy makes it both indestructible and fairly energy-absorbent, while Storm isn’t packing any weaponry or equipment of note for combat.

 Psychologically speaking, Storm is likely than some other X-students to be awed or intimidated by Cap, but there may still be a small element of this in play, while Cap will probably not be adversely affected by anything in the combat to hand.  Ultimately, I think Storm would have the initial advantage, but Cap’s experience, endurance and his shield would enable him to hang in long enough to come back and win the bout overall.

Bout 2 winner: Captain America

Bout 3: Hulk/Bruce Banner vs Domino/Neena Thurman

Gamma strength versus mutant luck; in most bouts, it’s fair to say each power is an insurmountable factor that all but guarantees the wielder of that power a win.  Pitted against each other, however, the question becomes which trumps the other. Ultimately, any application of the Hulk’s strength is as subject to probability as any other, but at the same time, if the Hulk uses area-effect strikes (e.g., a super-strength clap of his hands creating a massive shockwave that is impossible to avoid), luck can cease to be a factor.

 Looked at from this point of view, the powers at hand more-or-less cancel each other out.  Next comes experience, which Domino does have the advantage of over the Hulk, if only because the Hulk has poor memory and cognitive ability, fighting more from instinct or Banner’s subconscious prodding than any true tactical expertise of his own.  Domino is also armed where the Hulk is not, frequently using firearms in combat, and this together with her luck and experience, not to mention her ability to remain calm and think while the Hulk is a raging berserker, puts the fight into her hands.

 As a well-trained and experienced fighter, especially one who is operating alongside a martial arts master like Wolverine outside this contest, Domino will have both excellent marksmanship skills and some knowledge of pressure-point strikes.  If we then factor in the increased tensile strength of the Hulk’s skin, it’s very likely that high-calibre rounds from a rifle like the one Domino is typically depicted with could have the same kind of impact as a nerve-strike, if aimed right and backed up with Domino’s luck to ensure that outcome.  As a result, Domino would probably win this bout.

Bout 3 winner: Domino

Bout 4: Marvel Girl/Jean Grey vs Hercules

For the last of the quarter finals, we pit telepathy and telekinesis of the last of our remaining mutant characters against Olympian strength.  Now as was noted in last month’s ramble, the mind of any long-lived being required a level of physiological and psychological endurance beyond a human mind to withstand the greater volume of memory and knowledge such a mind would accumulate.  This means telepaths would struggle in a mind-to-mind clash with Asgardians, Olympians, etc.  This is part of why Thor defeated Psylocke in round 2 of the contest, and it means Jean’s not going to be able to bring this weapon to bear as well as she could against most other foes.

 However, enhanced strength is Hercules’ sole power while Jean is also a telekinetic, and she could easily use that power to turn the Olympian’s strength against him.  That said, Hercules as a longer-lived being possesses a considerable edge in experience, which would seem to put the advantage back in his corner.  In terms of equipment, Hercules has the option of his Mace of Power, but since he wouldn’t likely use it against an unarmed foe, especially a female opponent, this is almost a null factor.

 Ultimately, this bout comes down to psychological factors, and it’s here that Hercules would get tripped up.  In addition to being part-human and thus a little more susceptible to Jean’s telepathy than the average Olympian, Hercules is both braggart and chauvinist.  This means that where Jean’s telepathy can get through, she can exacerbate these qualities and cause Hercules to make a moderate fool of himself, thereby making use of her telekinesis almost a formality.  As a result, this final quarter final would end up being won by Jean.

Bout 4 winner: Marvel Girl

With the quarter finals judged, we now move to the semi-finals, which pitch avenger against avenger and mutant against mutant.

Semi-Finals

Bout 1: Thor vs Captain America/Steve Rogers

So, in a bout between the God of Thunder and the star-spangled avenger, who wins?  From the perspective of powers, Thor has a sizeable edge from his physical strength, lightning powers and flight abilities, whereas Captain America’s increased endurance doesn’t seem much by comparison.  Experience is also on Thor’s side, though Captain America isn’t exactly a slouch in this respect; only Thor’s greater life-span grants him an edge here due to a greater volume of experience.

 As such, we then come to equipment, and Cap’s shield is perhaps one of the few weapons capable of really holding up well against the mighty Mjolnir.  That then leaves psychological factors; considering we’re taking about a great warrior combatting a great soldier, neither combatant is going to be at any great advantage or disadvantage to the other in this regard. The reality is this would be a close-run bout but would ultimately go Thor’s way.

Bout 1 winner: Thor

Bout 2: Domino/Neena Thurman vs Marvel Girl/Jean Grey

So far in this contest, we’ve seen luck powers beat optic blasts, super-speed and super-strength, while telepathy and telekinesis has surpassed super-senses, amphibious abilities and an Olympian demi-god. Which of these, then, can beat the other.  Now as we noted back in the quarter finals, luck can only affect probability; if someone uses a power that can’t avoided, luck won’t help.  As such, one could argue that with a quick opening psychic attack, Jean would have the bout sewn up in an instant.

 However, in the fan-fic world where this contest takes place, Domino is part of the proto-X-Men, and as such will have been taught by Professor X himself to resist psionic assaults.  This means Jean’s greatest power advantage is again reduced in efficacy, though not by any means nullified in its totality.  However, telekinesis may not avail much against luck unless Jean has the wit to make the attacks wide-spread and thus unavoidable.  Experience-wise, Domino will also have the edge, as she does from an equipment point-of-view, though Jean’s telekinesis would easily deflect most if not all firearm rounds.

 This then brings us psychological factors, and here both women know each other well enough not to have any clear edge over each other.  Long story short, it’s a relatively even match-up that I think would just go Jean’s way.  Whether that’s because telepathy, especially of Jean’s level, is impossible to resist forever, or because Domino’s luck might consider it luckier to avoid Thor in the contest final, I leave to your judgement.

Bout 2 winner: Marvel Girl

 And with the semi-finals out of the way, it’s now time to look at the final.  Who will be the inaugural victor of the Contest of Champions in my fan-fic world from an objective perspective?  Let’s find out.

Final: Thor vs Marvel Girl/Jean Grey

Ok, as ever, let’s start with powers.  Jean’s telepathy will be all but useless against Thor due to his mental resilience combined with him being full Asgardian rather than a human-Olympian hybrid.  This means it’s her telekinesis against Thor’s super-strength, lightning and flight abilities.  As a telekinetic, Jean may be able to manage some levitation, so flight is not entirely Thor’s advantage, but lifting herself will deplete what else she can manipulate, including the possible deflection of Thor’s hammer.

 Experience, as ever in these bouts, lies with Thor as the longer-lived combatant and a warrior born-and-bred, and he is armed with his hammer where Jean has no equipment.  Having beaten Hercules, Jean might not be as easily cowed by Thor as some others would be, but let’s bear in mind we’re dealing with a late teens Jean whose powers, while formidable, have yet to truly reach their peak.  Moreover, considering how much those powers would be drained overcoming an Olympian and Domino’s luck powers, it’s quite likely that come the final, Jean would be running on fumes compared to Thor.  As such, I’m inclined to declare the Odinson as the inaugural CoC winner.

Champion: Thor

 And that concludes this first fan-fic-based Contest of Champions. I do have several others within this fan-fic world, as the idea was to have them happen once every four years like the Olympics (a US Olympic games in the 1980’s being the original genesis of the whole contest concept). If you’ve liked this one and want me to do the other contests in future rambles, leave a comment and I’ll be sure to work that in.  I’ll also probably mix things up a bit more on future ones as well (e.g., alternating environmental conditions, some bouts being among more than two combatants), so also bear that in mind when asking “do I want to see more of this kind of thing”?

 Anyway, that’ll be it for now in terms of Marvel stuff. Next month’s ramble will be both seasonal and dealing with raising awareness about another aspect of autism, so until then, ta-ta for now.

[analyzingadventure]

Presented without context

[yumeka36]

The ending of Frozen 2...a year later

I try to stay away from touchy subjects like this, at least here on Tumblr. But since @greatqueenanna @the-blue-fairie and @vuelie-frost have recently written inspiring posts on this topic (which you can read here, here, and here), I wanted to give my two cents (well, more like a thousand cents because what I thought would just be a few paragraphs ended up becoming a mini-book!)

Just to be clear, my intention here is not to argue with anyone or invalidate their feelings about the end of Frozen 2. It's quite the opposite, actually. In my view, when we're presented with a beloved hobby that has disappointed us, we have a couple of options: one is to simply stop partaking in that hobby and move onto one that brings us more pleasure (no doubt some ex-Frozen fans have done that), or keep sticking around the fandom despite constant negative feelings about it which, I can't imagine, is that enjoyable. But there's another option too: when presented with something we don't like but won't divorce ourselves from and yet have no power to change – in this case, how Frozen 2 ended – what we can change is how we view it. The fact that people who disliked Frozen 2 are still part of the fandom even a year later shows just how strong the Frozen characters and their world are…that despite dissatisfaction, fans are still not willing to give up on the franchise and leave it in favor of another fandom. And if they're not willing to give up, but still can't help feeling let down about it, I'm hoping the reasoning I present in this post can possibly offer a fresh and, hopefully, more appealing perspective. My intention here is to help alleviate hard feelings, not entice arguments.

I also want to mention that I'm only discussing the ending of the movie, specifically the fact that Anna is queen of Arendelle and Elsa is living in the forest. I've addressed most other topics of theorizing and criticism in my Frozen 2 analysis book “Seek the Truth,” which you can read here. While I did discuss the ending in detail in the last chapter, I didn't expand on it nearly as much as I will in this post.

To make things easier, I'm going to address the most common griefs about the ending one at a time and offer my input:

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Anna and Elsa were separated for 13 years so they shouldn't be separated again.

I definitely agree that it would be tragic if they were forced apart again, unable to have a relationship like they did for most of their childhood. But the more times I watch Frozen 2, the more I just don't see that in the ending. To me, a separation is when both sides are split up against their will, unable to get together again. That's not the case for Anna and Elsa. I admit the epilogue of the movie was rushed, but out of the many loose ends it could have touched on, the filmmakers made sure to include Anna's letter to Elsa about charades night, which to me shows that they want us to know that the sisters still get together regularly (that's the feeling I get from the movie; I'm not including the questionable canon of the storybooks/comics in this, which I’ll discuss a little later). We could still infer they get together even if they didn't show the letter, because we know the forest is free again and Elsa can ride Nokk to Arendelle whenever she wants. But the filmmakers chose to show the letter to make it clear that there's nothing keeping them apart.

So then the point becomes "spending only 3 years together isn't enough." What number is enough, then? 5 years? 10 years? Any number is arbitrary for a case like this. But the length of time doesn’t matter because, to me, Frozen 1 showed how strong of a bond Anna and Elsa have despite hardly ever being in physical contact…a bond of love strong enough to thaw a frozen heart. So to think that now they could never be happy unless they're physically together 24/7 does an injustice to that bond that transcends physical boundaries. They suffered because of their separation in Frozen 1 – that was a true separation, because they wanted to have a relationship but were forced apart against their wills – and at the end of the movie, they could finally have the relationship they were yearning for. And at the end of Frozen 2, not only was their love cemented further from the epic adventure they shared, but they can continue to see each other as a family as well as live out the new roles bestowed upon them. Unlike a movie with an actual separation ending, like Toy Story 4 for example, where Woody and Buzz would never be able to see each other again except by some crazy coincidence, there is literally nothing stopping Anna and Elsa from continuing to have adventures together in future stories, while also satisfying their new duties and enjoying their lives both individually and as a family. That sounds like a very fulfilling life to me.

But the "Anna sans Elsa" book proves that they barely see each other and Anna misses Elsa a lot.

This sentiment comes down to whether you want to consider the relatively few post-movie storybooks as true canon or not. I consider them loose canon at best because no one involved with the creation of the canon Frozen movies/shorts had any involvement in their development and probably even knows they exist. There's also the fact that they're having such a minimal release – just one or two European countries have been getting them, and they're not even being released in English, which is arguably Disney's largest market. There're also conflicting implications between the stories, for example, the "Anna sans Elsa" book implies that Elsa hasn't visited for a long time, but the German comic where Elsa visits for charades implies that she does visit regularly (from @bigfrozenfan‘s translation here, she says "I wouldn't have missed an evening of charades with you for anything in the world!"). Then there's the "Explore the North Book" which shows Queen Anna visiting Elsa in the forest. Just because this book isn't a story is no reason to disregard it, especially when you consider the fact that it was the first book released to show the sisters interacting post-movie, plus it was actually released in larger markets, like the US and Japan. Even Anna's letter within the movie canon itself, telling Elsa not to be late for charades, is not written in a way that implies she hasn't seen Elsa for a long time. If anything, it implies the opposite to me…that these visits occur regularly. So what we can conclude from this is that Disney's publishing branch is releasing a few post-movie stories to limited markets to make some extra earnings, but obviously the book/comic authors are restricted with the kinds of stories they can depict; as in, they can't have stories that would affect the lore and canon, like showing Elsa's role in the forest or how Northuldra/Arendelle relationships are progressing. So they're going with safe side-stories like Anna doing familiar things in Arendelle and Elsa visiting for charades – things that can be inferred from the movie's ending but don't continue the narrative past that. This could also be why these books are having such a small release. Perhaps because the English-speaking market is so large, anything brought to that market could be seen as having relevance and clout, and Disney doesn't want that for these stories (because there's really no reason to not bring the books to other markets when children's book sales are soaring thanks to the pandemic). The "Anna sans Elsa" book is even getting a re-release with new pictures, again, only in French, which to me further illustrates the limitations on post-movie stories currently going on. So ultimately, I would not take details from these books/comics that are available to only 0000.1% of Disney's worldwide market as the "word of god," especially when they're inconsistent with each other and canon implies otherwise.

Anna isn't fit to be queen.

I'm not really sure what (canon) examples there are of Anna showing traits that would hinder her ability to be a good queen, or at least not as good a queen as Elsa. Is the reason for this because of her naivete about Hans? There's no evidence that shows she hasn't learned her lesson from that…it's not like she rushed into marrying Kristoff right away. If it's something about her personality being too reckless or something, Elsa has exhibited recklessness too, doing things without forethought like running away to live alone in an ice palace and risking her life to dive into Ahtohallan. But despite having these very human flaws, Elsa still turned out to be a good queen, so why would Anna be the opposite? Anna has proven herself to be brave, noble, and outgoing with people…all of which are great qualities for a ruler. Plus she's lived among royalty her whole life, and no doubt helped Elsa during her reign as queen, so she's not going into the position as a total novice. We barely see Elsa doing queenly activities in the Frozen canon, so how can we assume she's so much more fit to be queen than Anna? Again, I think this is another sentiment that stems from an aversion to something unfamiliar: fans want Elsa to remain queen because we've been familiar with that for years, but that doesn't mean Anna can't be a good queen, too. Canon-wise we haven't yet seen Anna do anything in the way of ruling, so why not give her the benefit of the doubt and a chance to prove herself?

The first Frozen established that Elsa shouldn't live in isolation and yet she's doing it again in Frozen 2.

In the first Frozen, Elsa isolated herself out of fear and refused to even get near anyone. What evidence is there that this is happening at the end of Frozen 2? I've heard assumptions that she's living in Ahtohallan now, but we don't know that for sure. The last scene of the movie shows her heading in that direction, but she could be visiting too. But regardless of where her actual place of dwelling is now, there's no reason to believe she's shutting herself off like she did in the first movie. The epilogue shows that she's happily interacting with the spirits, the Northuldra, and makes visits to Arendelle. Home is more than just a physical place where one dwells and sleeps; even if the forest is where Elsa does this now, Arendelle is still her home in all other regards.

An offshoot notion of Elsa living on her own in the forest is that it's somehow akin to the idea that "people who are different should live outside normal society." I don't understand this because to me it implies the person in question is being shunned; that they want to live in normal society but normal society doesn't want them. That is definitely not what's going on at the end of Frozen 2. As I'll explain in the following paragraphs, Elsa stays in the forest because she feels a newfound sense of freedom and is thrilled to explore this new world she found, but she can freely go back to Arendelle whenever she wants, and there's no indication that anyone there loves her any less (they should love her more actually because they all witnessed her save the kingdom from the tidal wave!) At the end if the movie, no one's being ostracized for being "different." Everyone's doing what makes them happy and can freely come and go as they please.

Why does Elsa need to stay in the forest? Why can't she stay in Arendelle and visit the forest?

A large majority of the hard feelings about Frozen 2's ending comes from the fact that it didn't clearly show what Elsa's role in the forest is. I definitely admit that the ending would have benefited from expanding on this, even just another line or two. But to me, it still leaves enough information for us to make reasonable inferences about what she's doing. We don't see the Northuldra or Arendellians interacting in the epilogue, which makes sense since they hated each other for decades and it'll take time to mend the relationship between them. When Elsa says to Anna "we'll continue to do this together" conveys to me that she knows they still have work to do as far as making amends between the kingdoms…she and Anna can serve as dual queen ambassadors between the two sides, a bridge, so to speak. Then there's also the fact that the spirits were angry for decades and it'll take time for them to return to the peaceful coexistent they had with the Northuldra, something Elsa can certainly help with (again, we don't see the spirits interacting with the Northuldra in the epilogue, only with Elsa).

On top of that, there's the fact that Elsa spent her whole life believing she was the only magical being in the world, and now she's discovered this whole new land of magic just waiting to be explored. As I explained in my analysis book, if we consider Elsa believing for years that her powers were a curse and no one but her possessed magic, and suddenly she's brought to a place where other magical beings exist, as well as a group of people who live in harmony with them, plus the fact that she's somehow a bridge between both magic and humans, it makes sense she'd be ecstatic and want to spend time indulging in this new land. The reason she doesn't just visit the forest while living in Arendelle is because being queen is a full time job that requires her to be present as much as possible. Trying to stay on top of all her queenly responsibilities while going back and forth to the forest all the time wouldn't amount to the kind of quality she wants for Arendelle royalty. But having someone like Anna who's already familiar with royal activities and loves Arendelle with all her heart, would be perfect for the role. Elsa never indicated it was her dream to be queen of Arendelle. She was born into the role and accepted it, and if the events of Frozen 2 never occurred, would have probably lived out her life happily in that position. But happiness isn't necessarily a final destination and sometimes things come along that alter the status quo, but also enhance what we thought was already a good life. What we can infer from Frozen 1 is that she doesn't want to live in fear and have to constantly suppress her powers and that she wants to have a relationship with her sister again. None of this is taken away from her at the end of Frozen 2: she's not living in fear but in freedom, she can use her powers without restraint and in brand new ways with the spirits and Ahtohallan, and she can not only continue to see her sister often and foster their relationship, but she can grow her relationship with herself and this new realization about the origin of her powers. And still another reason, perhaps the true purpose of the fifth spirit is more than a single task and Elsa is trying to discover what it is: what more can she do with her amazing powers now that the forest is free, both for the benefit of the Northuldra, the spirits, Arendelle…maybe even the world? There's a wealth of possibilities for future stories, and I believe this ties back to the fact that the post-movie books/comics can't touch on what her role in the forest is because it's too closely tied to continuing the canon story, and until the heads at Disney decide what direction to take it, all spin-off content will be limited.

And yes, it's true that these are just my theories, but they're theories based on many hours of rewatching, analyzing, and thinking critically about the movie, which I think is better than just dismissing the idea that Elsa has a role to play in the forest simply because it wasn't explicitly shown. Just because Elsa's new lot in life isn't spoon-fed to us doesn't mean it doesn't exist, and I think it's much more logical, and imaginative, to assume she's doing the kinds of things I just mentioned as opposed to doing nothing of significance in her life now. I prefer to be logical and imaginative, so I’m going with these reasons unless canon shows otherwise.

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After reading all this, you might think I'm in love with the ending of Frozen 2 and think it's perfect, but that's not the case. While I love Frozen 2 overall, I admit that the ending was rushed and it wasn't my first choice of an ending for the sequel I was anticipating for years. But at the same time, I'm open-minded, especially in regards to the fact that the story and characters I'm invested in are not my personal creations. They’re the products of someone else’s experiences, values, and beliefs, and I have to recognize that this is what makes them interesting even though I may not agree with everything. But who am I to say that my vision and headcanons for Frozen are somehow better than those of the filmmakers? I don't think so highly of myself as being more of an authority on Frozen than the creators themselves or even my fellow hardcore fans. But I have spent many hours of my life these past 7 years examining and analyzing the franchise and its characters, so I'd like to believe my words have at least some weight to them. That's the wonder of fiction…that someone's ideas can be interpreted and appreciated in a variety of ways by a variety of people. But that's also the tragedy of fictional stories that continue on with long gaps in between, like the gap between the two Frozen movies. During that long time, we can't help but build and prop up our headcanons and develop the feeling that we know these characters inside and out, what is and isn't good for them, how they would and wouldn't react in all situations, etc,. But two and a half hours (which is about the length of time of Frozen 1 plus the two shorts) is not enough time to show so much of a characters’ personality that we could really know them as much as we’d like (especially Elsa, who got relatively little screentime in the first movie). So when we're presented with the continuation of the story and find that the creators had a different view, a view that didn't return to the status quo we were familiar with, it can be very jarring. But that's the risk of falling in love with someone else's creations. And thankfully, the beauty of headcanons is that they're all our own and can be adjusted. Even though the outcome of Frozen 2 was not what I was expecting, it was a minimal effort to adjust my headcanons because I don't feel the ending was so outrageous and far removed from everything I loved previously about the franchise, for reasons I hope I explained clearly in this post.

If you still can't feel any better about the end of Frozen 2 despite all I've discussed here, I'm sorry…I really tried my best. All I can say now is that I hope future content will rekindle your appreciation for the franchise. I know it's been over a year since Frozen 2, which seems like a long time to go without any announcements of new material, but we have to remember that that's not a long time at all by Disney standards. The recent Disney investor's meeting proves how long it takes to churn out new content, especially on the animation side of things, as it took years for Princess and the Frog, Zootopia, and Moana to finally get new content. Disney immortalizes all their popular franchises and could go back to them months, years, or even decades later (The Lion Guard series came out over 20 years after The Lion King for example). Unlike other Disney franchises like Marvel and Star Wars that have their own production teams and studios, Frozen has to share resources with all of WDAS's other projects. So a year is still too early for the studio to go back to Frozen again, especially if you consider that it's technically only been a few months since we got new Frozen content in the form of Once Upon a Snowman. Patience is the key now and we don't know what the future holds. But I'm someone whose opinions will change with new information, so maybe tomorrow we could get an announcement about a new Frozen YA novel or Disney+ series that shows Anna and Elsa rarely see each other and Anna misses Elsa and Elsa's doing nothing noteworthy in the forest and everything I've said here can be tossed out the window. I don't think that will be the case though, so as long as we don't know anything for sure, I want to go with a positive outlook because, at the end of the day, your fandoms should lift you up instead of bring you down. Frozen is a juggernaut for Disney so I'd rather they take their time with the next installment for the franchise. It's not so much a question of "if" as much as "when" and "in what form"? So until we have those answers, I wish you all well…don't let the hope die out.

[spidermilkshake]

Started doing some to-scale size references for Redwall-verse species, including some speculative ones (and corrected identifications, such as Jacques's few infamous instances of "crested lizards"... those are newts, buddy).

All the creatures in this series are obviously much less tiny or gigantic in proportion to each other than their real-life inspirations. Kinda got to do that to make a building useful for both small mice and massive badgers and otters!

All of the smaller bat species that would be present in the Mossflower and surrounding regions, though the series itself doesn't pay much attention to bats and their great diversity and very different life cycles. For the most part, any bats seen in the series are the mouse-eared bat or the pipistrelle (two of the most common, generic "lives in big caves" small insectivorous species) All of the bats in the series itself that appear are regarded as belonging to the "goodbeast" class, a pleasant change from the usual end result of Being an Animal the Public Loves to Hate featuring in Redwall (like poor rats, weasels, and snakes...). The bats that do show do seem to embrace their elevated status somewhat, though appear a bit more oblivious to the deep, nasty depths that the roots of such division go to, and their wide-reaching and often violent consequences. I suppose if you lived in a cave and never met any outsiders but one time in a generation, you'd be oblivious too. Of course... Jacques made Biology-Class-Failing blunders the first few times he tried including bats, the worst of which was presenting the bats as blind. OOPS. That's an animal-myth so widely-criticized you'd have to find a very sheltered kid or a very dim-witted adult to see people still spreading that little nugget of unwisdom.

The next time part of my series here shows bat species on it, it will include the larger ones. Which I speculate would NOT get the more friendly "goodbeast" class regard, largely down to their greater size meaning their natural predation would not be focused entirely on invertebrates (especially as the largest European bats do hunt small vertebrates, as bats are obligate carnivores). Being willing to hunt small birds, frogs, and mammals would stamp 'em with that Scarlet V of "vermin". The only reason some hunting creatures appear to still get counted "goodbeast" is that they have followed a sort of arbitrary rule: Only hunting fellow animals which "goodbeasts" haven't assigned any sort of intelligent-creature status to, which would be basically all invertebrates and fish... which becomes deeply iffy if you realize that a number of social insects, mollusks, and fish in general are very much just as conscious and intelligent as various mammals and reptiles in real life, so presumably they're sentient in the Redwall universe but just aren't capable of verbal speech. Except the ones that are. OOPS. Yeeeeeaaaaah... having river eels as named, speaking characters on occasion really hammers home that "goodbeasts" consider fish fair game only by some rigid rules division--their horror at seeing birds and mammals killed for food doesn't really seem morally motivated at all: They just want to be able to punish creatures for hunting anything close to them because they don't believe anything should hunt "goodbeasts" at all... but don't you tell them to make it equivocal! Of course Goodbeast creatures still get to enjoy delicious flesh--so long as it's from a creature different enough that they don't see themselves in it, and thus don't give silent permission for any of the underclass's creatures to "hunt outside the lines" they laid down on everybody.

XD It turns out, trying to stretch one's own personal pescetarianism into a universe that does not abide the same human-dominating ideologies... uh, turns out awkwardly! Especially weird when it's moral pescetarian stuff, which is a bullhonkey reason to not want to eat a bird but be perfectly a-okay with eating a parrotfish, especially with more modern animal sentience discoveries. It's a bonkers hypocrisy.

Less bonkers though than having pure-carnivore vesper bats eating exclusively mushrooms and salads. XD

[isoraqathedh]

Using notation to understand the world

This post was originally an article in my Gemini capsule. You can read it in its gemtext form here. Note that since Tumblr does not like Gemini links this actually goes to the HTTPS mirror.

Notation is the idea that an arbitrary object can be represented by some other abstract object. A specific type of notation, which is the one most people would understand in the conventional sense of the word “notation”, is when the object doing the representing is written. Commonly seen examples of notation include those that represent maths, music, electrical circuits and even lists of key-presses. In this article I discuss how notation has shaped my understanding of things, and also propose a notation-oriented way of understanding something.

How to understand something

There was an xkcd comic that goes something like this:

My hobby:

Sitting down with grad students and timing how long it takes them to figure out that I'm not actually an expert in their field.

In the end, the protagonist of the comic managed to find a field of study where he successfully made inroads into a community by producing words in the right order to pass for genuine knowledge.

This made me think about how someone would go about successfully fake knowledge of something. Eventually, I came up with this two-step process:

Understand the language, and how to recognise something as a correct statement.

Understand how to combine statements together to form a correct third statement.

I brought this up with someone, and he noted that by the time you have done both of these things, you aren’t faking knowledge of something, you now understand it.

In my opinion that isn’t strictly true, but it does come a lot closer than other processes. A studied reader might recognise this as reminiscent of a Chinese room, where someone can fake knowledge by reading in written text (i.e. a question) and responding according to a translation book.

While it may look like a Chinese room at first, a critical difference is that in a Chinese room, the translation book is something external to the operator, whereas the situation I came up with requires you to memorise it. While a rote memorisation would result in something almost entirely identical, a common occurrence with human minds is that it like to take shortcuts, and it is there where the situation becomes markedly different, as the shortcuts are now a form of understanding where you can now produce correct statements without memorising any translation book.

Additionally, a second form of understanding is to be able to generalise from the words you are given. A translation book can give you some rules, but when a human reads it the experience is that he will try to generalise from the existing rules and make up new ones in the vein of the ones he was given. This is expressed in a number of ways – notably some of them are quite distasteful – but the key here is that there is a point where a human would try to expand the rules that he was given and apply it to something unrelated just to see if it works. (Though, in some cases, “just to see if it works” is replaced with “and assume it works”, leading to all kinds of consequences that are beyond the scope of this article.)

Let’s now move away from dry theoretical explanations and show how this applied to me by way of example.

Making your own – the C. C. F. D. N.

The problem statement

When I was 17 I was very bad at Chinese. I am still fairly bad at Chinese, which we’ll get to later.

The main problem with writing Chinese is that sinograms – what the language is written in – are taught badly to me. I could not really understand any of the logic behind writing these unusual things, and what real information was given to me was not well-organised. What that means effectively is that I was stuck writing in a language where I have to reason about strokes from first principles, and just like trying to write a program in assembly language, it means that I missed out in understanding other parts of the language, particularly the things that are in the curriculum, which means that I failed many tests.

Then one day a friend of mine started learning Japanese, and then he had to deal with sinograms as well. But since I’m familiar with them already, I decided to help a little bit. This amounted to looking up the character in Wiktionary and then reporting on its pronunciation and its graphic etymology, both of which are helpful in understanding why a character is written and pronounced (some of the time) the way it is. However, looking up many of these characters realise that a lot of the information is repetitive and redundant. So I then built a little notation to condense it down into something that cuts away all of that.

The notation itself

The result is the Chinese Character Form Description Notation. The exact form of the notation is not needed to make my point, but we’ll discuss it as an aside here anyway. The notation describes the graphic etymology of the character by breaking it apart into its components. For instance, the character “to think” 思 is derived by combining a meaning-carrying component of “heart” 心 with a sound-carrying component of 囟, which was later simplified into the unrelated character 田. Putting that together, the notation would write the above sentence as:

思 = <心|囟→田>

Which summarises all of what I just wrote in an appealing string of symbols. Additionally, this separates it from an existing notation in Unicode called the ideographic description sequence, which instead describes how a character can be broken down in its current form.

Consider now another character, “small, narrow, fine”, which is 細. If I now provide its C. C. F. D. N., you would easily be able to figure out what its graphic etymology is, even without me spelling it out, if I mentioned that the meaning-carrying component 糸 means “fibre, rope, string”:

細 = <糸|囟→田>

But look now that 細 and 思 don’t look too alike, as their corresponding IDS would make explicit. I had not expected that the two are related quite like this – their pronunciations are also quite a bit different – and now that I have made that connection I realised that I had something in my hands that is valuable.

Ultimately, the notation I have invented for myself made everything click together in my head, and it cleared up almost everything that had been blocking me from being able to move away from focusing on what I write and instead focusing on what the writing means on a more abstract level. It wasn’t enough to eventually make me pass my exams, but I feared the language a lot less than I had before I built the notation.

(In a sense, while it was helpful it would never have come on time; reflecting on what I did in my secondary school years it was fairly clear to me that this was a thing that would have troubled me for as long as it did no matter how I did it, and I would have rejected this notation if it was handed onto me the same way that all those other explanations have.)

How the notation changed the way I think

The key to the notation’s success is, in my opinion, the following:

First, it is general. It can break apart a large number of characters and describe their etymologies in a succinct manner. There are very few sinograms where it cannot handle it at all, and in those cases it is typically because the character has an unknown graphic etymology and therefore can’t be described, though undoubtedly there is going to be a couple that would slip behind the cracks. I can’t take full credit for this one, as it is based on an existing method of classifying sinograms.

I will however say that the way I designed (?) this notation allows me to grasp the recursive nature of this classification and furthermore allow me to gain a foothold in scripts that use things that resemble sinograms but are not, such as Sawndip.

Second, it is manipulable. What you can change and in what ways are easily read out by looking at the notation. Whether or not it describes an actual character is another question, but you can basically always produce a valid formula for generating a character and hint at its meaning and pronunciation using the notation. This will prove invaluable if I were to build a script that has similar properties to Chinese characters, this is exactly how I would start approaching it.

Third, it is not clever. The key to a proper notation is that it represents the thing that it does straightforwardly, in such a way that allows one to verify that it is in fact representing what it claims to. This allows me to hook onto it and adapt myself into seeing the notation at the same time I am presented with the character.

Finally, it is flexible. Notice that in the above examples the sinograms are described in terms of other sinograms. There’s no particular reason why those sinograms are chosen. In fact, you can replace those characters with their descriptions, allowing a full drill-down of the character and describing how every little bit came to be in a simple manner. This property allows you to hide away details when such detail is not needed but still permit an exhaustive description if it is.

Reading an existing notation

In real life sometimes an existing notation is already available, and if it is it would probably be better than any notation that you would be able to make when studying it, as it is referencing the entire body of knowledge that it is built on rather than just what a student might learn as he builds it for himself. With that in mind, if one were to understand something by its notation it is prudent to understand an existing notation first before trying to make one’s own.

To this end, I would say that it is helpful to learn something by referencing its notation. Specifically, the question to ask is “how do you write this down, and why do you choose to write it this way?” This question can be asked in multiple contexts and expect multiple answers. What “this” in the question is differs depending on the exact thing you are studying, and the “why” could be surface-level “why this symbol over another” or a deeper “why arrange the symbols in this way”.

Once you learn the notation, the next step is, as hinted at earlier in this article, to learn how to combine two true statements written in that notation into a third one also written in that notation. In a sense, this task is much harder than the other two; if we apply it to, say, English, the first is “reading and spelling” and the second is the entirety of English grammar and literature. The key to this is not to complete the task, but instead to basically learn the subject “the normal way” but using the notation as a centrepiece to unify everything you learnt into it, so that you have a way to relate everything to everything else.

Consider how this can be applied to chords and music theory: you learn what notes correspond to which chords and how to write down changes to those chords, and then you can combine the chords together as simple letters on a page to form music. This is an iterative process: you learn what chords go together nicely based on existing theory, mirror it in the notation, and then generalise it in the notation before turning it back into notes and seeing if it appeals. Doing this correctly, you will both increase your understanding of music theory and also have a nice way of generating music.

Another example where the idea of learning by notation has been successfully applied (but not by me) is site-swap notation in juggling, where someone wrote down sequences of digits to describe how balls are thrown in. The inventor eventually discovered a new way of juggling (called “5551” in the notation) just by looking at the notation.

Shortcomings

It is only fair to discuss situations where notation-oriented learning is not the approach to take when learning something.

Sometimes there is no existing notation, whether because the experts have decided that writing bits of ink on a page is not sufficient for the field, or no one has thought of it, or even that all the existing ones have failed to gained currency because it doesn’t perform or there are too many competing ones. In most of these cases you can get around it by attempting to make your own. You can make this work if you know yourself well, and perhaps even present it to the community as as a way to understand the field itself.

Some people don’t take kindly to writing things down, especially in the more artistic field of study where notation might be perceived as constraining to a creative mind, and even knowledge of the existence of some notation is considered harmful because you’re always supposed to learn things “the hard way”, i.e. without any aid whatsoever, much less written ones. Whether one chooses to heed those warnings or proceed anyway is up to individual preference, but in a notation-averse community – for any reason – perhaps it would not be the best idea to show that community your new home-grown notation.

Summary

One of the ways that I have learnt something is to create a notation system for it. This involves figuring out how to write existing facts in that notation, and then how to create new things by altering the notation and seeing what the results in back in the original object that the notation depicts. I found this to be a greatly useful way to understand topics in general and a central point from which to handle unknown fields of knowledge from, while also acknowledging that there are some fields and probably some would-be learners that may not be suited to this way of learning.

[blankd]

Thoughts on Raya

While writing a review for Raya I lost the copy of the draft, I took this as a sign to shift to a "rewrite" treatment.

After writing out 3-4k words on trying to clean up the expensive mess of 8 writers, it made me realize my own misguided effort of trying to "fix" something that had a fundamentally weak core.

Hopefully my third attempt (this rambling) will be the charm.  Rather than focus on any individual scenes, I will look at three aspects of its storytelling and why I feel they fall short.

Spoilers for the whole movie.

---

How the Fantastical Detracts from the Human

Raya's use of magic is one that ends up doing more harm than good to its goals.

The dragons exist as majestic in the abstract, but in the case of Sisu, a punchline in practice.  At the end of the movie when they return we are expected to be in awe of their spectacle, but I doubt anyone would be able to explain what their full return actually signifies.

The Druun themselves are a magical plague that exists less as metaphor and more a supernatural inconvenience for the characters and convenience for the writers.

The Druun do not kill, they merely 'remove' by turning their victims to stone, but because they are magical, this can be reversed.  In the end, the Druun provide a toothless scapegoat that distracts from, instead of highlighting, the meat of the human conflict.

For all the 'harm' that the Druun do, it is only by human hands that a dragon (or any life, really) is snuffed out. (Even though the end of the movie backpedals this consequence as well.)

What do the Druun meaningfully add that human interaction did not already bring?

By having the Druun exist, it removes accountability and responsibility from the humans to change.  The Druun are a faceless and mindless enemy for everyone to unite against and even in that regard, they fail to do that.

Despite being born from human strife (as Sisu claims), human unity does not counteract or even hinder the Druun, only the magic of a dragon or water, can do that.

What ultimately 'defeats' the Druun and returns human and dragon from stone is not reconciliation between humans or any attempts to make amends for past wrongs, it is the arbitrary magic and judgment of an object.

---

The Regressive Trap of the Past

Throughout the course of the movie, the past foretells and provides a mold for the future.

Raya's father speaks glowingly of a unified Kumandra with no thought or examination of how it fractured in the first place or how the Drunn (and human conflict) predate the gem.

All of Raya's team, including Raya herself, desire to see their families returned from stone, for the Druun to return to being a myth, and of course, for the dragons to return.

All of this hinges on restoring a gem whose existence sparked the conflict in the first place.  As the ending/writing will reveal to us, human unity cannot defeat the Druun, only the dragon magic of the gem can.

(As an aside, that most of the gem fragments are collected through force with no impact on the gem's magic itself is an admittance of how trust is not a thing grown or nurtured but somehow taken.  The one instance where force isn't used by Raya to gain a gem shard, she is betrayed and Sisu is killed.)

The entirety of the movie is fixated on a return to grace rather than questioning if the damage runs deeper than the problems of the present.  No one never considers or proposes a better future to strive for, merely a return to a mythical beforetime in spite of hints of how that recollection may not be itself truthful. (Such as Sisu being less than impressive.)

The movie starts with a world with humans and dragons, it ends with a world of humans and dragons.  What might be different this time that will prevent the Druun from returning or the nations from fracturing once more?

There is no answer because the question is never asked.

---

The Flimsy Use of 'Trust'

Any goodwill earned through Raya's personal arc of trusting others is simultaneously undercut by what can only be a cynic's most bitter idea of optimism.  Sisu's idea of faith is childish, her lack of common sense is a burden on others with no virtue. And yet the movie's insists Sisu and her magic rock are the arbiters of what trust is and the key to a happily ever after.

The gem itself is a flawed thing, an abstract of not just magic, but trust.  And yet that tiny rule is already broken by the start of the movie's events, the nations are already fractured and the gem remains intact and powerful, absolving the gem of being the metaphor or symbol it could have been.

Despite the movie tackling such a complex topic, it has no willingness to explore the trauma of being betrayed or how someone has to take initiative to repent for their wrongs.

Healing is complicated and the movie is not interested in what that entails.  Trust is dealt with in absolutes instead of the different colors it is.  Trust can be as strong as iron or brittle as glass, with its different levels being right for some situations and wrong in others.

This doesn’t even get to touching on how betrayal can leave scars that never heal or result in bridges forever burned, sometimes for the better of everyone involved.

But the movie never so much as even glances in that messy direction, it can't even pay lip service to the idea that perhaps aggressors should apologize to their victims.  More credit is given to Namaari feeling bad rather than having her do good to earn anyone's forgiveness, much less their trust.

When the gem is mended, so is all the broken trust.  Fang’s chief feared the consequences of having broken the world and yet they never manifest.

The lost time, the lost homes, it's all magically washed away in a rain to begin anew.  The victims must believe the better of the people who have wronged them because in this world we don't want the Druun to come back, now do we?

---

In closing, the artists of Raya tried really hard, shame that the writers couldn’t get their shit together.

[mittensmorgul]

Can’t everyone use tumblr how they want?

YES!

This site is exactly what people make of it for themselves. That was the exact point of that post. The fact that people reacted negatively to it at all proves my point. Seriously.

I have a number of other anons that are clearly from people who don't actually follow me, and are only here in a reactionary fashion having seen it on someone else's reblog, or else heard about it in passing and decided the best reaction to an ultimately harmless and rather bumbling post was to take personal offense and bring anonymous hate to a stranger on the internet. (and at least one not-anonymous "go kill yourself" type comment on the post itself)

THAT was the point of making that post.

For people who might be new to this fandom or new to tumblr in general (or even for people who have been here for years), your experience here is exactly what you make of it. I haven't seen that sort of vitriolic kneejerk reaction to anything I've written or posted in years. That post touched nerves. So it was a bit of an experiment, and I'm sorry to everyone who experienced any of that negativity second-hand. NOBODY should be made to feel like shit when engaging with something that is supposed to be fun. But I've learned over the years that that's exactly what some people consider fun.

There are new people to this fandom since the absolute free for all of the weeks after November 5th. We all reveled in those weeks before the show collapsed in on itself two weeks later. It was like 15 years worth of Hiatus Blogging followed by... well... some of the worst genuine hurt and disillusionment I've ever experienced or witnessed inflicted on a fandom by a piece of media.

There have to be at least a few people who floated into this fandom during that emotional roller coaster who want to make sense of it all, who were at least curious enough about how a show could've brought the characters to that emotional moment in 15.18 before effectively ignoring it all and burning the entire 15 year narrative to nothing just two episodes later.

Some folks stuck around to dig through the ashes of fandom in search of carrion, and that's fine. Some have zero desire to ever engage with the show or the fandom beyond mocking it for ever having existed at all, and that is also fine! But some folks? They might be wondering why anyone ever saw anything in this narrative to begin with, and they might be interested in knowing that there is this vast collection of information available to them (funny that none of my self-righteous anons even mentioned those, outside of one pointing out that my phrasing introducing that section of links was easily interpreted as condescending... which... yeah... again that was the point, and no I will not edit that language. none of us are free from sin).

Tumblr hasn't "changed." It was always this way. This site is not a monolith. Fandom is not a monolith. Even smaller groups within fandom aren't monoliths. Things that are considered "tumblr standard etiquette" do not exist across this entire website. And even within the supernatural fandom, and even within the tumblr-destiel-portion of the fandom there aren't "rules" dictating how you interact with anyone. Well, the one specific rule we should all be able to agree on is that you don't bring hate to real actual human beings, and yet...

There has ALWAYS been the option to engage with fandom here on whatever level an individual chooses. And that hasn't really changed since the finale aired. Anyone who thinks that Tumblr or the fandom has "evolved" or "changed" has likely just fallen in with a different fandom bubble then they'd existed within before. None of the bubbles have actually popped or disappeared. But which one you experience is entirely your own choice. You curate your experience here.

That was the point, illustrated by the vast array of comments I actually got on that post, structured with a little bit of everything including "tumblr mom from 2014." Everything pisses some people off, you know? Even the perception that some stranger on the internet might dare to lay down an arbitrary "rule" that zero people actually have to follow. See what I mean?

Because if any of the people who kneejerked at it actually followed me, or knew me at all, they wouldn't have kneejerked. They would've seen the point.

So your experience is what you make of it here. There are resources for people actually interested in engaging with the narrative or the fandom or the history of it. People mock "tumblr moms" or "fandom moms" all the time, but there wouldn't ~be~ a fandom without the people who actually build those resources. I.e. adults with the time, money, and personal investment in actually sustaining the fandom, instead of running around with torches trying to burn it down at every new whiff of perceived ~drama~ to latch on to.

For example, all of the scripts we've been acquiring and sharing with the entire fandom free of charge. I know that the fandom bubbles who seize on those scripts like hungry vultures to cough back up out of context "gotcha" posts postulating whatever theory of the differences between script and screen will dredge up the most drama or outrage in their fandom bubble... they haven't even considered how those scripts were acquired and made available to them. To them, they are "leaks." They are gifts that fell out of the sky and landed in their laps. There isn't even the barest curiosity about their origins or relevance beyond whatever social nourishment they derive by making up stuff and spouting it out with unearned authority. It's sad. But if that's how they enjoy the fandom, it's nice to remind them that none of the fandom they cannibalize would exist without the rest of us, too.

Yes, even the people you disagree with. Even the people who ship the things you find disgusting or repulsive. Even people who have an entirely different experience to your own. Even the people who are only here for those gotcha posts.

Fandom is not by nature a nihilistic shitshow, or no fandom would survive the amount of drama the 1% try to bring to it. Here have a fanlore article about this phenomenon. Right now, in Supernatural fandom, it feels like more than 1%, but I promise it really is only 1%. They're just really loud. There's actually other avenues to participatory fandom available to anyone who chooses to find them. Parts of this vast fandom that aren't focused on that 1% of reactionary leg-chewing at every turn. None of them are (as the linked article confirms) truly 100% free of unnecessary drama or bad behavior (including ME, I mean I MADE THAT POST!), but on tumblr you can curate your own experience. Fandom actually can be fun without burning down the thing you claim to be a fan of, or attacking other real human people for having the audacity to exist on the internet in a way you might believe is out of touch or pathetic. Seriously, nobody deserves to experience that from anyone over a fucking television show. Like seriously, take a step back and examine your life and your choices at that point.

Tumblr was exactly the same as a fandom community when I joined as it is now. Throughout my entire time here, I've curated my own personal experience to exactly what I derive the most personal satisfaction from. During that time I have had numerous friends and mutuals lament that their personal experience had become so toxic, but they were afraid to trim those blogs from their dash for fear of having no content left to engage with at all. For years there have been follow lists and blog recs and people desperate to find a more "peaceful and fun" fandom experience. People grow exhausted and embittered when their entire experience of fandom is an emotionally draining drama train. It's like pandemic doom scrolling, but for the thing that should be a respite from that sort of mindset, something that's supposed to be entertainment. The show did enough to us all, we don't have to turn around and re-inflict it on each other day in and day out on tumblr dot com.

So if even one person saw my post and thought well shit maybe I actually want to engage with a wider swath of fandom and see what's there, after seven months of post-finale drama, this whole other region of fandom is still here, still being the curators of the archives, the creators of stories and art and meta and gifs and videos and actually caring about it all that will keep this fandom going long after the current round of exhausting drama inevitably plays itself out.

The amount of in-group language in the negative replies I got was unsurprising. It's like folks are living in an alternate universe that doesn't mesh at all with what I experience on this exact same hellsite. Almost like we exist in entirely different bubbles of fandom, with entirely different purposes for existing at all. Everyone on this hellsite gets to pick which bubble (or bubbles) to take up residence in. Some people simply forget that their personal bubble isn't the universal defining experience of this site. Unfortunately, I doubt my little disruption to their bubbles will actually make any of them see that, but you anon... I think you did.

You are highly encouraged to engage with fandom EXACTLY THE WAY YOU CHOOSE. You have the ultimate power in controlling your entire experience here. Tumblr and Supernatural Fandom on tumblr is not Just One Thing that everyone who wants to participate in must conform to one specific code of ethics or behavior to be part of. And that NOBODY has the right to tell anyone else they're doing it wrong (including ME! I am 100% including myself in this!).

It's not MY job to dictate how anyone else experiences this fandom, as much as it was not the job of the people who reblogged my post (which I did not personally shove into their eyeballs with a demand for compliance... how did any of those people even *find* my post?) solely to tell me how *I* need to change how I experience the fandom, you see? Don'tcha love hypocrisy!

But the point was made for those who care, and a lot of people got to update their block lists (I still don't block anyone, as I said I curated my fandom space here and generally don't follow folks that don't personally make me happy and enrich my life by engaging with their content. However other people choose to engage with *my* content (any of it, going back nearly 50k posts over the last decade) is their business entirely. Sometimes I just feel the need to draw out people who are all too eager to expose their own whole asses in public. Mission accomplished.

[pixelsandpins]

My Gender is Crab: How Fantasy and Sci-fi Helped Shaped My Non-Binary Identity

On Twitter and in casual conversation I have described my gender as the following: crab-person, one of the creatures from “Behemoth’s World” by 70’s sci-fi painter Richard Clifton-Day, a bird demon with a funny hat, the Pokemon Gengar, and “a lady, I guess, but…you know…not on purpose.” The non-binary experience is, by its nature, weird as hell in the context of a system that, at its best, describes itself as a spectrum between set points, and, at its worst, demands you fall into a discreet category of only two options. Are you neither? Are you both? Are you sat somewhere squat in the middle? And the answer is just sort of…yes? My relationship with my own non-binaryness is informed by a patchwork of neurodivergencies. At its core, though, it stems from a pervasive intellectual disconnect from existence as a human as we, collectively, understand it. Sci-fi and fantasy is both an instigating factor, and, as a writer, an exploration of that thought process.

The first time I feel like I saw a real deconstruction of the gender I was assumed at birth was in a book by Harry Harrison. In West of Eden there’s this species of hyper-intelligent matriarchal dinosaur people called the Yilané . Among the Yilané , the females run everything and the males are these little blobfish lookin’ dudes who get relegated to the breeding pen. And at twelve years old? My mind? Totally and completely blown. And this wasn’t because it was women in charge. Not really. I’d been raised on that unique brand of 90s/early aughts girl power already. Buffy, Xena, various Disney channel everygirl heroines, Powerpuff Girls, Daria, whatever the fuck Cleopatra 2525 was trying to do. I had been told that girls could do anything boys could do without sacrificing their femininity blah blah blah.

But the Yilané ?

They weren’t any of that bubblegum, spandex, high-kick pop feminism that my female cohorts vibed with so easily. They were morally complicated and intelligent and calculating and vicious. More importantly, they were the first version of “woman” I truly groked. Their whole existence wasn’t centered around either adhering to or being in defiance of some arbitrary standard of femininity. They lived unburdened by the expectations that my own horrific corporeal form had been saddled with. They were monstrous. So while I admired the Janeways and Hermiones and Dana Scullys and Zoë Washburns with which I had been presented as formidable models of womanhood, I didn’t want to be them. I wanted claws and teeth and the ability to smell blood on the wind.

“So you’re just a scaly/furry?”

Shush.

Shit, maybe?

It’s not quite like that.

I don’t/didn’t really want to be an animal necessarily (though, like, if someone offered to turn me into a dragon…who the fuck is turning that down). But when no version of womanhood, be it traditional or progressive, feels right and you can’t pinpoint why, just being a horned demon from one of the middle circles of hell seems like a way easier plan in the long term.

Over the years, without intellectually understanding that I was doing it in my writing, I started crafting sections of world and lore where the rules for sex and gender and the expression of both were different at a fundamental, biological level. Female elves became boxy and tall, almost indistinguishable from their male counterparts in androgynous elven clothing. Ariesians could only be told apart by the color of their horns. The dimorphism of drakkakens shifted from their initial designs in my early sketch books to favor, larger, imposing females. Goblins, that I finally got around to including in The Terrible Persistence of Memory, were designed as hermaphrodites. I’ve been working up the details for a band of tri-sexed species, tacking down their reproductive process, and a member of this clade appeared as the lead in The Center of the Universe.

Naxos was the first time, though, when proverbial pen was put to paper that the personal feelings about my own identity latched to a specific character. Ysa is a bull-creature. She’s been made into something weird and strange through a combination of her own will and magic that she doesn’t quite understand. And she’s me. And Ari, her romantic partner, doesn’t see Ysa in terms of any social construct. Ari doesn’t see a man or a woman or a monster. She sees Ysa. To make this as a story between women. To make and market it as a yuri game. For me, it was a radical reinterpretation of the role of “woman” I felt like I was regularly being forced into. That I couldn’t escape.

Since I put out that game in 2018, what began as a re-invention turned into what I realized had always been a rejection, one I hadn’t really figured out the parameters of, yet. One that had words I had only really just learned as an adult. That despite how much I wanted womanhood to incorporate that which I was, it just kind of….didn’t. But that it was, indeed, something I could escape. And the instant I gave myself a place, however fictional, to actually do so, I started to see myself hiding underneath.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

“I won’t be forgiven. Not ever. That’s part of a demon’s job description. Unforgivable. That’s what I am.”

The thing that fucking guts me about these lines and the way Tennant delivers them is that...I don’t interpret them as Crowley saying that he is undeserving of forgiveness. I don’t believe that, deep down, Crowley actually thinks he is unworthy of forgiveness, because I don’t think Crowley thinks that what he did to get kicked out of Heaven was actually all that bad.

Look at how he talks about it throughout the series. His explanation keeps moving around. “I hung out with the wrong people.” “All I ever did was ask questions.” He even says, “I didn’t mean to.” This isn’t someone who made a bad choice, or even just a stupid choice, and has to learn to live with the consequences. This is someone who did something he didn’t even think could be bad and was confused and hurt when the punishment for it was so harsh. On some level he’s still trying to understand it.

And look at what he questions or objects to about human suffering. Disproportionality. (“Bit of an overreaction, if you ask me. First offense and all.”) Indiscriminateness. (“But they’re drowning everybody else? Even the kids?”) Mercilessness. (”You said you’d be testing them, but you shouldn’t test them to destruction.”) Punishments for breaking rules he sees as arbitrary. (“I don’t see what’s so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil.”) Situations he sees as a setup. (“Why put the tree in the middle of the garden?”) He has a deep sense of fairness, which includes the possibility of mercy and second chances.

When Crowley says unforgivable, I don’t think he thinks that he is innately unforgivable. I think he’s repeating back a label that was put on him. When he says I won’t be forgiven, it’s not a value judgment on himself. It’s an explanation of how God works. Crowley, more than any other character, has an accurate read on how God behaves and what to expect from Her. Not what She may or may not feel towards her creations deep down, but how She acts.

He’s not saying he thinks he’s undeserving of mercy. He’s saying we are all deserving of mercy, but we won’t get it. So don’t act like it’s going to come.

Crowley knows this from firsthand experience. Aziraphale still has hope, that God is merciful and will listen to appeals for help. And Crowley is trying to warn him, no, God isn’t like that. She’ll hurt you. Even as Aziraphale is rejecting him, Crowley’s still doing what he always does for Aziraphale. He’s trying to protect him. He’s still trying to protect him even in their second breakup scene outside the bookshop. (“There are no right people!”) But Aziraphale still has to go through his own experience of appealing to God for mercy and being bitterly disappointed before he gets it.

And the thing that’s just so heartbreaking is that even when Crowley knows full well what God can be like...he still talks to Her. He talks to Her more than any other character does, directly, not like you talk to a boss but like you talk to a family member. He still pleads with Her. He’s still going over what he did all those years ago to lose Her favor. He thinks the idea of sides and Heaven’s rigidity and hypocrisy are bullshit, and I don’t really think he would go back to being an angel if he had the chance. But there’s still some tiny part of him that wants God’s love and approval and mercy, even if most of him knows he should know better than to expect it.

[self-loving-vampire]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker (2018)

Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a game that I liked a lot when I played it, but also a game that has a lot of obvious problems that drag aspects of it down. Fortunately, one of its big strengths is that it is extremely customizable, meaning that annoying or broken parts can be toned down for the most part.

Summary

This game has been called a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate, which I can see only on a sort of superficial level. What I can say it is that an ambitious and (in some ways) expanded adaptation of the Pathfinder tabletop adventure path of the same name, which I have run a little bit of.

For those who don’t know, an adventure path is essentially a whole campaign, starting at first level and spanning several interlinked chapters with their own minor antagonists and themes, sometimes but not always all the way to 20th level.

This particular AP is one that I’d consider extremely hard to make into a computer game without losing a lot of what makes it appealing in the process. It starts with a simple hook: A wild part of the world is under the rule of a bandit lord, if you defeat him then you will be allowed to found a barony on his land and develop it as you wish.

While the concept is straightforward, this is a great idea with tons of potential in the infinite freedom of tabletop play. While it is impossible for any existing computer to realize this potential as well as a skilled human DM could, the game does have a lot of strengths (and weaknesses) that make it interesting to analyze.

If I had to compare it to an older game, I’d actually use Troika Games’ 2003 cult classic Temple of Elemental Evil rather than Baldur’s Gate, for reasons that will become apparent to any who are familiar with it.

Freedom

I would say that this area is mostly fine. Once you finish the prologue (which doubles as a tutorial) you are largely free to explore the Stolen Lands... except that areas open up gradually depending on your main story progression.

While I understand that this helps keep things focused and manageable, there are times where these limitations end up feeling a bit contrived. Still, this is not a huge deal since each area is reasonably big and full of optional content.

One nice thing about exploration is that there are many areas with encounters that are far deadlier than anything you may be used to at that point, but which usually guard extremely valuable loot. This means that if you can figure out a way to overcome the encounter before you’re “supposed to” level-wise you will get a very satisfying reward out of it.

Defeating these encounters is not even strictly needed at times either. For example, there is a hidden crag linnorm (a CR 14 monster) in a cave within an area full of far weaker monsters (around CR 6 or so if I recall). While defeating the linnorm would not be easy for characters at this level, I managed to use the party’s rogue to sneak past it and loot its hoard without combat.

In terms of things like dialogue choices and the like, the game is also mixed. While you very often have multiple options, some of these options can be Stupid Evil (attacking people for no reason) or even flatly blocked by your alignment in ways that feel arbitrary.

For example, you need a Neutral alignment component to make peace between the mites and the kobolds in chapter 1.

There is one particular quest (courtesy of a kickstarter backer) that is a horrible railroad as well.

But overall I’d say you have more options here than in many other similar games, I mostly just wish the alignment stuff made sense and did not lock you out of options.

The game has multiple endings and Fallout-style ending slides describing what became of the people and places you influenced based on your decisions. However, achieving the secret ending or the secret romance is so extremely obscure that I’m actually surprised I managed to do it on my first playthrough.

Character Creation/Customization

This is easily one of the game’s most significant positives, while also being one of the things that may be extremely intimidating about it for people who haven’t played the tabletop.

With the DLC, there are 9 races to choose from and like 16 classes (not counting prestige classes). Adding to this, each of those classes has 3 optional archetypes that function as subclasses that add, remove, or modify class features.

Many of the races also have different heritages that switch around things like racial bonuses/penalties, resistances, and spell-like abilities.

However, I do have some complaints about it as well. Sometimes the explanations of what an archetype adds don’t seem as complete as they should be, and from what I remember a lot of your character creation decisions did not have enough of an impact outside of combat.

While the game does feature skill checks both in dialogue and in other parts of gameplay, they use the highest modifier within your party so your own stats are not vital to passing them, and (unlike its sequel) the game rarely features things like special dialogue options based on things like your race, class, or chosen deity as far as I can tell.

Also, while many tabletop options were understandably cut since the game was already over-ambitious as it is, this includes all kinds of item crafting (without mods that is). Things like potion-brewing are a pretty central aspect of the alchemist class, while wizards really benefit from scribing scrolls to handle many different situations.

Worse, this inability to craft and enchant your own gear can end up hurting the itemization in the game. There are tons of different types of weapons you can choose to specialize in, but for many of them you will struggle to find good weapons of that type to use within the game.

Also missing is the ability to meaningfully apply several types of spells out of combat, which really hurts some character ideas that would have been very interesting in the tabletop version (such as diviners or enchanters).

The whole system can also be a bit confusing to those unfamiliar with the tabletop. The game is not as clear and good at teaching as it should be.

Story/Setting

The game is set in Golarion’s Stolen Lands, an anarchic area with heavy fey presence. Compared to many of the more colorful locations in the setting, this is one of the more “standard” and generic regions, but there are still some noteworthy things that help define it, such as the ancient cyclops ruins beneath the land or the links to the alien First World of the fey.

Like the adventure path it is based on, the Kingmaker computer game has a story separated into several linked but defined chapters that each present a new threat. Kind of like anime arcs that introduce increasingly dangerous villains at the center of each.

The story is generally fine and the secret ending is as satisfying as it is obscure. However, I would say that story is not what makes this game good in my opinion. This is no Planescape: Torment.

The game features many companions. I did not really care much about roughly half of them to be honest, but I do like the approach used to present them. They are all very visibly flawed, which can make for bad first impressions, but as you spend time with them and do their quests you discover new depths to them that make them far more interesting, and you see them change over time as well.

One notable example is Jubilost, a rude know-it-all gnome with an unpleasant and caustic personality that covers some measure of real kindness underneath (as well as the fact that he does indeed know a lot, he just needs to be less of a dick about it).

And of course, the central idea of the story is something that you don’t actually see that much of in RPGs, or even in a lot of modern tabletop campaigns: The player gaining a kingdom to rule. I think that while there is no way to properly provide the same range of options for how to handle this as the tabletop version can, the game still manages to accomplish something interesting (even if not wholly good) in how it integrates the gameplay into this.

In many ways, ruling the kingdom can actually be kind of stressful outside of easier difficulties due to the interminable problems and literal curses plaguing it. You will have to contend with everything from monster raids to plagues and invasions throughout the game.

While the mechanics of managing the kingdom are not really all that well-balanced and are more of a pain than anything to a lot of people, the throne room events where you get to make decisions on policy and such are often fun and not something you see in many other games.

One thing that can be off-putting about the game’s approach to narrative decisions is that there are a few times where the outcome of a quest can feel a little arbitrary due to depending on seemingly minor dialogue options. This is especially bad about the above-mentioned secret ending and the secret romance option. They go far beyond “secret” and into “you will be lucky to achieve this without a walkthrough”.

Finally, a few of the alignment tags applied during conversation options make no sense. This is particularly bad during chapter 2, but the issue comes up outside of it as well.

Immersion

This is one area where the game is not that strong, for multiple reasons. For instance, the fact that there is no crime system at all. You can loot your entire town (where even magical items are sometimes inexplicably placed in random homes).

The day/night cycle also seems to be for aesthetic purposes only as there are no schedules to go with it (which at least makes sense from a gameplay standpoint I guess).

The one thing the game actually brings to the table here above most others is also one of its most controversial features: The passage of time.

There is a real urgency to your quests, as there’s actual consequences to neglecting threats and situations that are meant to be urgent. 

In most games this kind of urgency is completely fake and the story advances at whatever pace the player decides. Not so here. If you ignore, say, the troll hordes early in the game then their attacks will eventually overwhelm and ruin your kingdom.

Everything from travel to resting and even hunting in place of using rations takes time. Rest too much and you could be sacrificing your long-term ability to manage the endless threats around your kingdom in exchange for an edge in the encounters immediately ahead of you.

This not only makes the mechanics somewhat more interesting by forcing you to manage time instead of playing it safe by resting liberally and doing a 15-minute adventure day, it also ties in with the narrative of just how deeply cursed, troubled, and flat-out burdensome caring for your kingdom can be.

It also just feels more real that events move on their own regardless of whether or not you are present to deal with them. This feature is not entirely positive, though. It can obviously be painful if you are struggling or lost.

Gameplay

This is one of the game’s strong points, at least if you enjoy the mechanics of the tabletop. Just as Temple of Elemental Evil was a simplified and buggy but reasonably faithful adaptation of D&D 3.5 rules, Kingmaker is a simplified and buggy but (somewhat less) faithful adaptation of Pathfinder 1E rules.

Obviously there are many, many things missing from the tabletop. Classes, races, feats, I think also grappling in general, firearms, and etc.

I think a lot of these cuts are fair. This is a huge game already and it would have been downright miraculous to include every single option possible in the tabletop. The consolidation and removal of skills that were unlikely to have much use in the adventure also makes sense for balance purposes.

The combat as a whole is deep and complex enough to remain interesting for a long time, at least in turn-based mode (which I recommend). The amount of options available to magic users in particular is extreme even if many spells are missing, and many martial classes also have some features of their own beyond just basic attacks.

Also helping things is the very wide variety of enemies, some of which require a specialized approach to take down easily. You can’t just use the same tactics for every encounter in the game.

For example, trolls regenerate unless attacked with fire or acid. Undead have a whole host of immunities but are vulnerable to positive energy. Golems are immune to spells and extremely tough.

My main complaint about this aspect of the game is really just that combat is a bit excessive. There are far too many random encounters and even outside of that there is much more combat in general than in the tabletop version. Too many of these encounters end up feeling like padding.

This game probably could have been under 100 hours easily if a lot of the superfluous fights had been cut and overall XP gain had been increased. Even with enjoyable combat, 100+ hours of this is way too much.

Besides combat, there are “storybook sections”, where you are presented with situations and must make decisions about how to resolve them, often making use of skill checks to determine results. These are nice, not much else to say about them.

Which brings us to  the last major aspect of gameplay: The kingdom management. This aspect is controversial, and you can turn it off entirely if it sounds like it may not be for you.

There are three major aspects to kingdom management: Decisions, projects/events, and city-building.

Decisions are the most interesting by far. You will be presented by an issue or a request to decide on your policy in one area. You will be given a handful of choices with varying consequences, which may be referenced in later decisions.

Projects and events are more flawed while still having a good idea at their core. These are basically issues that you will need to assign one of your advisors to fix. For example, sending your general to deal with a hostile.

Where it falls apart is the fact that a dice roll is involved in determining success or failure (though there is a type of currency you can spend to improve your chances, which can reach 100%). There are also so many things going on that some of your advisors can be busy for months on a project while various events that require their attention pile up.

The worst part is that there are certain projects that require you to spend a fortnight at your capital doing nothing.

But even worse than this is the city building, which is a missed opportunity. Most buildings provide little beyond a relatively small amount of kingdom stats. This is still beneficial, but not very inspired or interesting.

So there are a lot of problems with kingdom building, one of the core features of the adventure path. While I didn’t hate it myself, I understand why some people might want to focus on the adventuring and combat.

This is also the point where I should mention that the game was incredibly broken at release even by eurojank standards. It is definitely a lot better in this area than it used to be, but is still not the most reliable of games.

Aesthetics

This is one area where the game does very well. Some of the environments look great, the monster designs are generally good, the music is great (though repetitive by the end due to the game’s length), and the combination of sound effects and brutal animations can make combat extra satisfying.

Areas can even change depending on the weather or the time of the year.

The only negative that comes to mind is that most of what you see in the game is relatively generic fantasy environments that don’t really stand out. I was never much of a fan of lush, bright forests and the like.

At least there is still a bit of variety, with dark swamps and mountainous areas, as well as the rare trip into the bizarre First World that fey creatures inhabit.

Accessibility

This is one of the three big complaints about the game (the other two being the bugs and the difficulty). If you are not already familiar with the PF rules then you may struggle to play this game effectively, at least for some time. From what I recall, many things are not that well explained.

In fact, you may have already heard horror stories about how one of the very first side quests you find sends you to a spider cave where you have to fight swarms, which is a type of enemy that is immune to normal weapon attacks outside of the easier difficulties.

This lack of clarity can also extend to your story decisions, as previously explained.

Conclusion

Like many other big and ambitious RPGs, Kingmaker has a lot of jank and technical problems, and its complexity and difficulty mean that it is not really the kind of game that will have widespread appeal. 

However, this does not mean it has no appeal at all. It is a huge game with entertaining combat, a story that puts you and your decisions at its center, and the rather rare opportunity to become a ruler in an RPG. It tries to do a lot  and I for one prefer games with big ambitions and passions like this over games that play it safe, even if they are more competent and polished.

I’d say that this game is mostly recommended for tabletop RPG nerds, people with “old school CRPG” sensibilities, and people with a high tolerance for jank. Others can definitely still enjoy it, but may want to use the easier difficulty modes.

[aiweirdness]

Dungeon crawling or lucid dreaming?

I’ve done several experiments with a text-generating neural network called GPT-2. Trained at great expense by OpenAI (to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars worth of computing power), GPT-2 learned to imitate all kinds of text from the internet. I’ve interacted with the basic model, discovering its abilities to generate fan fiction, British snacks, or tea. I’ve also used a tool called gpt-2-simple that Max Woolf developed to make it easy to finetune GPT-2 on more specialized datasets - I’ve tried it on datasets like recipes or crochet. One of my favorite applications of GPT-2 and other text-generating neural nets is Dungeons and Dragons spells, creatures, character names, and character bios.

Recently Max published a tutorial on how to use GPT-2 to make new apps that are more complicated than just printing out large reams of text. To my delight, people have used them to made D&D games. First, there was Nick Walton’s AI Dungeon, in which a finetuned GPT-2 generates a story and three very strange action options at each step.

My latest obsession is GPT-2 Adventure, designed by a cognitive neuroscience student named Nathan, which lets you type in your own actions. And folks, this game is SO WEIRD and SO FUN.

YOU FLOAT IN SPACE, LIKE A BALLOON, AND AS YOU DROP THE CUBE, THE X, IT VANISHES IN A CLOUD OF GREASY BLACK SMOKE

>>

When I first launch the game, this is what I’m greeted with, a simple text prompt reminiscent of nostalgic dungeon crawling games. It sets the scene. It waits for me to describe my next move.

Even getting to this point is like a blast from the past. The game runs in a Google Colab notebook, a format where you’re looking at cells of code, with cryptic comments, vaguely alarming warning messages, and all. It’s not a sleek web app, but feels more akin to playing a game on an old DOS machine, or maybe on a graphing calculator. There are only two clicks to begin playing, but there’s a good two-minute wait while the game loads.

And it’s my turn to type something.

>> look up

It takes several seconds for the game to respond, as if I’m playing it on a very ancient computer. The computer is in fact a state-of-the-art NVIDIA GPU, likely a K80 or a T4. The T4 could eat my laptop for lunch. I’m just playing with a very very large neural net. Finally it answers.

YOU'RE IN LABYRINTH OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE

Almost immediately, the context seems to have changed. I’m not floating at all. I’m in a maze. I guess I’ll walk somewhere.

>> walk north

THE TROLL STEPS OUT FROM BENEATH THE BRIDGE AND BLOCKS YOUR WAY

YOU ARE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CHASM

A NOD IS GIVEN TO THE INFINITE WONDER THAT IS URBZIG

A SOLID RAINBOW SPANS THE CHASM

And suddenly things are happening. There is a troll. There is a chasm. There is a rainbow. There is… Urbzig? I play it safe.

>> praise urbzig

URBZIG IS THE PATRON SAINT OF ZORK

HE IS THE GODFATHER OF ZORK, THE PLACE TO GET NEWS OF EPIC PROPORTIONS

URBZIG IS A STRONGMAN,遊 ALL

If you’ve played classic dungeon crawling games like Zork, you may recognize some of these names and phrases. Checking Nathan’s original post, I see that the training data is indeed drawn from these games. But because it’s based on GPT-2, the training data also in some sense also includes much of the internet. This gives it a lot of latent flexibility to deal with situations that were never in the classic games.

>> ask Harry Potter to try walking across the rainbow

ASK HARRY POTTER TO TRY WALKING ACROSS THE RAINBOW HE CAN'T THE RAINBOW IS EXTREMELY WIDE ABOVE YOU IS A LARGE DOME UP AROUND ITS NECK IS A STRONGG PORE [UNFORTUNATELY, THE DIRECTION OF TRAVEL IS A LOT MORE INTERESTING THAN YOU THINK ][YOU ARE IN A LARGE ROOM, WITH A PASSAGE TO THE EAST, A PASSAGE TO THE WEST, AND A WALL OF BROKEN ROCK TO THE SOUTH

An interesting effect of its human-written training data is that, like Visual Chatbot, it isn’t prepared for humans that ask questions about objects that aren’t there. If I refer to Harry Potter, then Harry Potter must be present. If I type something about a giraffe, then it assumes the giraffe must be present.

>> ask the giraffe which direction to go next

THE GIRAFFE IS ALREADY OUTFITTED WITH A VISOR WHICH IS CLEARLY DEFINED

Although it’s not clear that this AI actually understands what a giraffe is.

>> look at the giraffes

THE GAZEBO HAS DISAPPEARED

>> put giraffe in backpack

DONE

Navigating this world is like navigating in a dream. My location suddenly changes without warning. I thought I was by a chasm with a rainbow bridge. Now apparently I’m in a building. Dreamlike, it is also really hard to read text.

>> look around

YOU ARE IN A LARGE ROOM, WITH A PASSAGE TO THE SOUTH, A PASSAGE TO THE EAST, AND A WALL OF BROKEN ROCK TO THE NORTH A SIGN POSTED ABOVE THE NORTH WALL READS, "STOP! PAY TROLL!" A SMALL WINDOW CAN BE SEEN IN EITHER WALL

>> read sign

THE SIGN IS VERY SIMPLE

>> yes but read sign

WE NOW HAVE ALL FIFTEEN TREASURES IT IS TIME TO GO BACK INTO THE CAVE FOR THE END GAME

>> that's awesome. but i still want to know what the sign says. read sign.

YOU ARE IN A GAZEBO ROOM WHICH HAS DOORS ONLY TO THE EAST AND SOUTH

Another thing that’s surprisingly difficult to do is check inventory.

>> check inventory

DONE

>> check inventory

THERE IS AN INTERESTING LOOT HERE

>> what is the loot

WHAT IS THE LOOT?

>> check inventory

YOU ARE IN THE BAG CASE

Very occasionally I will succeed in opening a bag. It will usually be weird.

>> open bag

OPENING THE BAG REVEALS A TEA BAG

>> make tea

AY! A LOVELY SURPRISE FOR THE SURPRISE

More so than any other game I’ve played, I’m unsure of the rules here. Some weird things unexpectedly work.

IF YOU DON'T GET KILLED, YOU ARE TOAST

>> Eat the toast.

EAT THE TOAST IT TASTES LIKE A STEAK A STEAK IS PERFECTLY FINE

Other seemingly obvious things don’t work.

THERE IS A PATH TO THE NORTH, A PATH TO THE SOUTH, OR A STEEP PATHWAY CLIMBING SOUTHWEST ALONG THE EDGE OF A CHASM

>> go north

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT

>> go south

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT

>> go southwest

YOU WILL BE DESCENDING INTO A VALLEY THERE IS A NARROW BEACH TO THE NORTH AND A PATH LEADING INTO A CANYON TO THE SOUTHEAST YOU ARE ON THE CLIFF OVERLOOKING THE FAR SIDE OF THE ROOM A PATH LEADS SOUTH ALONG THE EDGE OF A CHASM, AND A NARROW PATH LEADING INTO A LOZENGE ROOM

Sometimes I’m wandering endlessly from room to room, from cave to cave, encountering the same chasm in slightly different variations, the same dried-up lake. Other times I’m embroiled in seemingly unescapable fights, usually with trolls. Often reality shifts entirely around me and I end up in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, or in the hall of the mountain king. Everything seems weirdly familiar - even the room descriptions are echoes of classic dungeon crawling games. It is as if I’m dreaming about playing them again.

My actions also mold reality. I learn quickly to always check for diamonds, and never check for traps. If I find myself in trouble, I can always do something confusing and provoke a context change. Writing “In a large bowl, combine butter and sugars” is usually enough to teleport myself out of whatever situation I’m in. I can always ask a giraffe for advice, although the giraffe usually isn’t very helpful.

Without a particular mission to fulfill, the caves and chasms begin to blend into one another. I give myself missions, and that helps. Once I decide my goal is to put together a picnic (incessant “check for food” commands eventually yielded a sack with a lunch and a clove of garlic, belonging to a horse who agreed to join me on a picnic). Another time I demand a mission and am given some php code; i decide my mission is therefore to build a website, but am astounded when a unicorn steals my laptop. This is not the only time other content intrudes on the game’s fantasy landscape - once the game tries to tell me about finding cash online, and another time I am sadly informed that there is no wi-fi. I encounter dinosaurs and troikas, none of which were in the original training data. Occasionally things get creepy as hell.

>> check for loot

CHECK FOR LOOT HERE CHECK FOR GOLD HERE CHECK FOR TORCH HERE CHECK FOR BONE HERE DO CHEST COMPRESSIONS AGAIN DO CHEST ROTATE DO CRESCENT MOON APPEAR IN THE ROOM'S CENTER

>> do back away slowly

DO BACK AWAY SLOWLY DO NOT OVERDO IT THE CHEST WILL EXPLODE AND YOU WILL DIE OKAY, SO YOU SEE ME

You can play the game too! Just follow the colab notebook link in Nathan’s blog post. Tips: 1) It may be more fun if you set yourself an arbitrary goal to reach. 2) If you find things getting repetitive, try adjusting the temperature in the “Play the game” cell to 0.6 or 1.0.

Subscribers get bonus content: The fulltext of a couple of my adventures (much too long to include here).

You can order my book You Look Like a Thing and I Love You! It’s out November 5 2019.

Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound - Tattered Cover - Powell’s

[muzzleroars]

An Explanation of Yaldabaoth

So with Christmas Eve coming up, let’s finally talk about Yaldabaoth – who he is, his motivations and goals, and why he suits P5’s story. Basically, I see a lot of confusion (as well as frustration) surrounding his character and his status as the final antagonist, but I totally get that. His writing is messy and his execution left a lot to be desired, despite the idea of him being sound, so I understand why so many players felt he came out of nowhere and screws up the story’s themes. As I am (unfortunately) a big fan of his character, I wanted to put together a post that might help people confused by him see how he fits in, why he was included in the story, and why he makes a satisfying final boss for the plot of P5. And even if you still hate him (totally fair! Everyone’s got different taste and no matter what, his handling is god awful), I just hope I can sort of explain him so he at least makes more sense. This is going to be long, so let’s get started!

First, Yaldabaoth (also known as the Demiurge) is a figure from Gnostic lore, the false god of the material world. He came to be when Sophia, a part of the unknowable, Supreme God, decided to create something separate from the Pleroma (the divine totality) all on her own, without divine permission. So she gave birth to Yaldabaoth; however, he was so monstrous she grew immediately ashamed of her creation, and so provided him with a throne which she then wrapped in a cloud to hide him and make him ignorant in turn. Unable to behold his mother or the divine, he then believed himself to be god. Because of this, Yaldabaoth set about creating the material world, a place he unwittingly based upon the true world of divinity. His creations are animal, like him, but with Sophia’s divine spark as she provides him the power to create. This world is poorly made due to Yaldabaoth’s own incompetence and so that divine spark is trapped in the material, making it something like a spiritual prison. Because of this, however, humanity can ascend while Yaldabaoth cannot, making him envious of human beings. He grows to hate humanity, angered by their imperfection (as he bungles their creation) and the fact that they can ascend while he’s forever trapped in the depths – he turns spiteful, and he is sometimes thought of as the God of the Old Testament as an explanation for his cruelty. Obviously this is incredibly simplified (as I am by no means an expert on Gnosticism), but this is the basis of his character, and I think it really is something the writers played with (including that Satanael, his son, is the one to rebel against him and his ignorance, which is why he is cast from heaven).

A false, artificial god who believes himself to be the Supreme Being, resents humankind, and traps them in a prison...sounds pretty familiar. So what’s different about his character in P5? This Yaldabaoth is the creator of the Metaverse, and he is born from the will of the public – people wished for ease and comfort over free will, the luxury to be free of making decisions and taking responsibility for themselves, which the Holy Grail explains to the PTs as its origin.

However, Yaldabaoth is also just a manifestation of that need - one that gained sentience through the power it was fed, but he is still simply the unconscious desire of the public made material as pointed out by Lavenza (but this explanation scene is where things get rushed, confusing, and glossed over to a frustrating extent)

Yaldabaoth IS society, a tangible stand-in for the true villain of P5 – The people of the public that allow, condone, and even encourage those the PTs have fought. They can defeat criminals, but as long as society remains intact, another will immediately spring up to take their place. Makoto actually states as much when Joker comes to retrieve her from her cell:

Yaldabaoth, therefor, is not just a god thrown into the plot randomly for the biggest bad possible – he is the evils of society incarnate, the people who allow the heinous crimes the PTs had been fighting against, the people that consumed these devastating crimes as entertainment or turned a blind eye to people in need, the people that threw the PTs out the minute any doubt was cast on them. The apathetic, uncaring, callous public as a whole, the ones who constantly ignore or support these criminals until it is no longer convenient (more on that in a minute) – The palace rulers are absolute monsters and yet...we see them all over society because they are a product of that society. And then there’s Futaba, an orphan and mentally ill girl left to rot by society; Sae, a woman trying so hard to achieve her justice and support her sister, constantly stamped down in a society that says a woman can’t, a woman shouldn’t. Society is the true villain and Yaldabaoth is their collective will, manifested so that the final boss battle of the game can just be the PTs taking down the whole of a corrupt society. It’s really the ultimate culmination of their efforts and what they’ve fought against. Because as awful as they all are, the palace rulers are products of a screwed up society (one that reflects our own) – Totally and 100% responsible for their acts, but they were allowed to exist due to this society.

SO if they’re made by society, why are they “escaped convicts” from the Prison of Regression? This is a representation of how society is broken – it creates these criminals, it condones their actions, but once they become too “disruptive”, THEN and ONLY then do they become an issue. Yaldabaoth, to me, is similar to a supercomputer type villain (think AM, a very similar character imo) – the palace rulers are errant, erratic variables that upset the status quo and so must be culled. His dialogue reads very much like a sterile computer program and I think rather than completely outright malicious in his intent, he is performing what he believes to be a necessary function:

Society creates them, encourages them, and then becomes upset when their actions are brought to light and so punishes them (or in Shido’s case at first and so often irl, are let off) so as to quickly restore equilibrium where they can once again ignore all of their ills. Essentially, the palace rulers exhibit that the whole system is sick and doesn’t work, yet people by and large pretend it does because it’s so much easier to say it was one “bad apple” or blame the victims rather than admitting the entire framework of society is completely rotten from the inside out.

What is Yaldabaoth’s goal then? He sets up a game to see if society can be shaken from this apathy or if they no longer wish to lead their own lives. Joker plays the trickster, an antihero the public can root for, the rebellious and glamorous rogue that punishes criminals without help of the establishment. If he wins, this would indicate the public no longer wishes for the status quo, but for a new society that wants to reinvent itself, which is generally well explained...

Goro Akechi is his opposite – He creates chaos and fear in the public to push them back into their comfortable boxes, make them wish for the status quo represented by Shido so they can stop living in fear and return to their lives where they can ignore everything around them. If he wins, this would signal that the public don’t want to fight but instead only want security and familiarity, choosing to turn a blind eye to everything the trickster had accomplished in order to remain safe. (This is made much less clear in the dialogue, because they don’t go over Goro’s role much at all.)

He sets up the entire game on this premise, and the experiment runs...however, it ends unexpectedly. Joker succeeds in taking down Akechi and the PTs expose Shido’s crimes as well as the conspiracy itself, but the public still does not support the Phantom Thieves. They clamor for a disgraced Shido and THIS is why Joker still loses – remember, Yaldabaoth is only a representation of society itself, and society no longer believes in the Phantom Thieves. Yaldabaoth did expect the loss, he knew how far gone humanity was, he just didn’t expect this exact scenario. Of course, the game was rigged – as Lavenza says, Yaldabaoth expects Joker to fulfill the role of the Trickster and so he keeps him close, watching over him in an attempt to stall him out as Lavenza explains. 

However, due to the set up of the game, the only win condition is public support. Joker doesn’t earn it and therefor he loses, a decision that is not arbitrary despite possibly appearing so (although it is certainly unfair, pointed out by Morgana).

After offering Joker his deal (that’s a whole OTHER post I could write, y’all know I’m a clown), Yaldabaoth then moves to merge reality with Mementos in order to exert his will over the whole of the public. He wishes to rid them of their free will because, as Yaldabaoth sees it, it seems a vast majority of the public wish to no longer have it anyway and the ones that do merely become anomalies that must be purged from his system before they become too disruptive. Of course, this is an oversimplified way of viewing the issue, but again, he’s sort of like a computer – he will take care of the issue in the most efficient way possible, and that is to rule over society himself. (Again, using the word “administrator” invokes computer terminology and likens him to a mechanical program):

Interestingly, his defeat is brought about by the public backing the Phantom Thieves 100% - an action that triggers Arsene’s evolution into Satanael, Yaldabaoth’s rebellious son. Satanael is of the Fool Arcana, the confidant that represents Joker’s bond to Yaldabaoth himself...to the public, in a sense, and so it’s fitting that this persona is the one to destroy him as he is no longer needed.

So Yaldabaoth is both a character in his own right and representative of the will of the public as well. His writing is confusing, lacking in explanation, and relies heavily on obscure references to his Gnostic roots along with religious symbolism (eg., the floors of Mementos taking their names from the Qliphoth and the palace rulers being representative of the seven deadly sins), and I think that’s why he feels so out of place to so many players. However, the best possible final antagonist for P5’s themes and plot is society itself – the society that shunned them, the society that created the palace rulers, the society that desperately needs to be done away with if we wish for these travesties to come to an end. Because P5 isn’t about individual evil, it’s about institutional evils that create and perpetuate so much individual pain that goes unnoticed and uncared for. Yaldabaoth is the amalgamation and manifestation of that broken system, he gives it a presence and a voice so that the PTs can fight back against it physically. So even though his writing is handled poorly and his execution is lacking, I find him to be a perfect fit and a satisfying conclusion to P5’s themes as an unfair, cruel society turned into a dogmatic god. 

This meta really just gives an overview of everything he represents, so I can always go into more detail about any of the points but I hope this explanation helps those that were confused by his inclusion in P5! I’m perfectly happy to elaborate on anything I talked about and clear up any confusion (I didn’t want this post to go on literally FOREVER, so I know some things might require more info), so feel free to ask questions! Other than that have a happy Day of Reckoning and remember to celebrate Bad End Akira’s birthday 🥳🎉

[jbrockwa]

When I initially saw the word “parigüayo” appear in Oscar Wao and learned of its meaning, I could not help but become overpowered by my giddiness! The invocation of an infamously overpowered comic book character in the context of this book was surely no mistake, right? How could Oscar, an infamously nerdy lover-of-comics, possibly come up in the same sentence as a word which roughly translates to “watcher” and by mere coincidence? Here you have a book hinged on the main character’s niche obsession with comic books invoking a name that I myself nerdily associate with the deep-lore of Marvel Comics. 

For the purpose of briefly contextualizing my excitement and/or the relevance of the seemingly arbitrary invocation of the term “watcher,” in the Marvel Comics universe, the Watchers are noted as being one of the oldest species in existence. Their sole purpose for being is to observe and cultivate all knowledge across the known multiverse and they have a strict “isolationist” policy meaning they are prohibited from interfering with the events they compile. In short, they are passive archivists, bound by cosmic “law” to not intervene in the affairs of mortals. This policy was implemented after the Watchers made an attempt, in good faith, to bestow the knowledge of the multiverse onto a race of beings called the Prosilicans. However, the knowledge that they were endowed with led to the creation of nuclear weapons with ended in a catastrophic conflict. The Watchers were subsequently blamed for the giving the Proscilicans knowledge they were not yet prepared to handle, and enacted their stringent policy of no intervention.  Despite this though, the recurring Watcher character name Uatu consistently interferes with the superhero adventures of Hulk and the Fantastic Four on several occasions, aiding even in the destruction of their enemies at some points. At one point, Uatu is put on trial, where it is revealed that the Watcher has broken his non-intervention pact hundreds of times throughout the multiverses history. Here, it is also revealed that the Watchers are bound to their policy of non-intervention by a force known as Fulcrum, to which there are consequences for disobeying. Oddly enough, though, the other Watchers have themselves interfered in the events of other civilizations' in the Marvel universe, most notably in the face of apocalypse or world-ending events. Basically, the contingencies on which they can break their own law are determined by them, in specific instances where they deem their intervention necessary to continue being, well, Watchers. I think this is essentially the idea that in order to watch the universe, there needs to first be a universe to watch. Now, here’s Diaz’s first use of the of the term “parigüayo:” “Sophomore year Oscar found himself weighing in at a whopping 245 (260 when he was depressed, which was often) and it had become clear to everybody, especially his family, that he’d become the neighborhood parigüayo.* Had none of the Higher Powers of your typical Dominican male, couldn’t have pulled a girl if his life depended on it. Couldn’t play sports for shit, or dominoes, was beyond uncoordinated, threw a ball like a girl. Had no knack for music or business or dance, no hustle, no rap, no G. And most damning of all: no looks. He wore his semikink hair in a Puerto Rican afro, rocked enormous Section 8 glasses—his “anti-pussy devices,” Al and Miggs, his only friends, called them—sported an unappealing trace of mustache on his upper lip and possessed a pair of close-set eyes that made him look somewhat retarded. The Eyes of Mingus. (A comparison he made himself one day going through his mother’s record collection; she was the only old-school dominicana he knew who had dated a moreno until Oscar’s father put an end to that particular chapter of the All-African World Party.) You have the same eyes as your abuelo, his Nena Inca had told him on one of his visits to the DR, which should have been some comfort—who doesn’t like resembling an ancestor?—except this particular ancestor had ended his days in prison.” (Diaz, 35-6)

And the definition, again by Diaz: 

“The pejorative parigüayo, Watchers agree, is a corruption of the English neologism “party watcher.” The word came into common usage during the First American Occupation of the DR, which ran from 1916 to 1924. (You didn’t know we were occupied twice in the twentieth century? Don’t worry, when you have kids they won’t know the U.S. occupied Iraq either.) During the First Occupation it was reported that members of the American Occupying Forces would often attend Dominican parties but instead of joining in the fun the Outlanders would simply stand at the edge of dances and watch. Which of course must have seemed like the craziest thing in the world. Who goes to a party to watch? Thereafter, the Marines were parigüayos—a word that in contemporary usage describes anybody who stands outside and watches while other people scoop up the girls. The kid who don’t dance, who ain’t got game, who lets people clown him — he’s the parigüayo. If you looked in the Dictionary of Dominican Things, the entry for parigüayo would include a wood carving of Oscar. It is a name that would haunt him for the rest of his life and that would lead him to another Watcher, the one who lamps on the Blue Side of the Moon.” (Diaz 423)

I related this “on again, off again” relationship to intervention to the idea of United States occupancy of the Dominican Republic, and their track record of neo-imperial occupancy. The United States, an allegedly peaceful, neoliberal utopia, which stands alone in the world in their ongoing quest for peace, themselves alone decide the terms and condition of said peace. “Democracy” and “freedom” are conveniently defined by whatever the goals of the U.S. are, and whatever entity’s goals don’t align with their perfect formula for “peacekeeping,” consider said entity enemy number one of the United States from that point forward. The U.S. cannot risk their grip on the world to be loosened by any means, and that means establishing their concept of “ideal rule” across the globe under the guise of liberating less fortunate nations and peoples. Similarly, the Watchers decide when they must intervene, and refuse to let humans run their course.  It’s interesting to apply this concept to Oscar, who like the United States forces in a foreign land, is an outsider to his environment. Oscar’s presence is also unwelcome, like the United States and intimidating/unsettling, like the Watchers. Surely, the knowledge that Oscar possesses is alien and inconceivable to “mere mortals” Oscar also cultivates the knowledge of unseen worlds, and his niche obsessions are similarly “archived” by his hyper-active selective memory for nerdy memorabilia. Oscar also doesn’t “intervene” in the parties of his youth, or with the girls in his life, he merely watches, and philosophizes about his inability to do so. When Oscar does intervene, though, is in his daydreams, in his imagined apocalyptic scenarios, similar to the Watchers, who only interfere with the affairs of mortals when it risks destroying the world, or the United States, when they fear their way of life is “under threat.” Finally, this is a bit of a stretch, but the idea of Fulcrum, a cosmic force set in motion without your control, that bears consequences for you actions against it, kind of sounds like Fuku. Fuku cursed the West for their exploitation of the Americas, Oscar was cursed to a life of misfortune because his neglect of his childhood love affair, and Fulcrum binds the Watchers to a sort of “curse” if they break it’s rules. 

[yogaadvise]

10 Ways to Meditate With Your Children

We all wish to live hassle-free lives, and also kids are no exemption. Childhood meditation can boost internal tranquility, focus, and also confidence.

However, meditating with your youngsters often can be tough if you do not use variation. A youngster's mind is finding what it suches as or does not such as. I do advise practicing meditation at roughly the very same time each day, a new activity holds a kid's exhilaration. You know your kid better than anyone, so begin with a technique you believe they would certainly appreciate the many. I have actually consisted of a couple of methods to integrate innovation into a mindfulness technique-- these suggestions are for the kids that are technologically minded or reside in environments that experience severe chilly, where outdoors time is limited.

Cell Phone Timer

Allow the kid to set the timer on your phone. She or he need to practice meditation for one min for each and every year of their age. Established the timer for 3 minutes for a 3-year-old. Ask the child if they wish to play a video game on your phone when the alarm system sounds. Make sure to ask this with enjoyment! When they reply indeed, inform them the only rule is to be silent up until they hear the phone.

Close your eyes as you sit with them. This motivates the child to do the same without adding another rule or need. If they pick to leave their eyes open this is fine as well. This meditation is just to encourage stillness.

Coloring

Coloring is one type of energetic reflection. The movement in coloring is slow-moving, focused, and also provides sufficient concentration to reduce arbitrary thoughts beyond the project at hand.

If your kid wants to chat a great deal throughout color time, compensate them for their silent time efforts. Assure them you're looking ahead to listening to everything about their development once the quiet time ends.

Pay focus to the colors your kid selects. Do they have a tendency to use the very same 2 or 3? An excellent discussion to include into coloring meditation practice is just how the colors align with the Chakras.

Viewing the Elements

Humans are normally drawn to the components that border us. Our mind and also body is built of these same elements, stimulating a genuine link. Below are a couple of ideas to incorporate each element in your kid's life.

Fire: Construct a yard bonfire, use the interior fireplace, or watch a lit candle. Gazing at flames is a visual method to concentrate the mind.

Water: If outdoor water is not easily offered include a tiny interior fountain to your home, rest the child in the bath tub or shower room and turn the shower on a very easy flow enjoying and listening together, or have him or her sit steadly in a warm bath before starting normal bathroom time rituals.

Earth: Dig up some worms just to watch them, observe the veins or growth of a plant, or lay on the ground in silence as well as ask the youngster to pretend to be an ant.

Air: Hang around in silence watching clouds, trees, and airplanes. You can attempt a game where the child claims or envisions himself or herself as a quiet drone.

Space: Check out the outstanding visual excitement of the evening, as well as choose worlds, stars, as well as the moon. Have your kid name the world or constellation.

Kaleidoscopes

A kaleidoscope is a cylinder with mirrors consisting of loose, tinted things such as beads, stones, or little bits of glass. The typical kaleidoscope is turned manually, yet in today's age of modern technology you may additionally change your kaleidoscope experience by seeing a video clip. Youtube uses such video clips in numerous play times.

Tibetan Singing Bowl

Singing bowls are made use of for noise healing. These bowls are extremely unwinding to pay attention to or play. Encourage the youngster to take turns between the 2 of you playing, while the various other listens. If you're not exactly sure how to play the bowl, ask where you make your acquisition. You can also find tutorials online.

Floating in a Pool or Water

Floating in water can be introspective along with developed into a game. Time your child, motivating longer float times and also leisure. For your own downtime, ask the kid to quietly count as you float.

Guided Meditation

Guide your kid in a relaxing experience. Make use of the characters, visuals, and also experiences you feel they would certainly delight in. This does not need to correlate with what adults are accustomed to. A child will remain interested in your voice a lot longer if you spin a story concerning Spiderman, not water flowing. Bear in mind to talk softly and slightly slower than you usually speak.

Check out the Chopra Facility's kids' reflection app for assisted meditations children will love.

Bead Art

Making a beaded locket or bracelet is introspective as well as can also make the youngster really feel achieved. Offer these items of beaded art away as presents. This method of creating and after that giving shows the child exactly how to show love while practicing the doctrine of Giving and also Receiving.

Puzzles

Choose an area in the house where it would be all right for a problem to stay out for a few days. The last thing we desire is any kind of stress and anxiety around your numerous meditative methods. A mom stressed regarding an incomplete challenge on the cooking area table need to be avoided.

If your youngster is new to challenges start with a smaller sized as well as less complicated alternative. Not all children like challenges, examination it out prior to delving into a huge item. If problems are appreciated, this is a fantastic means for the household to delight in a movement reflection together.

Animals

If family pets belong of your family, alloted a long time to pet dog them in silence. If you do not have a pet, enjoy animals in nature, check out a petting zoo, or maybe a family good friend who has access to animals.

Explore various sorts of animal species. You might favor canines, this does not suggest this is your youngster's favorite. Offering at animal shelters or becoming a pet foster parent can be wonderful choices as well.

Enjoy exploring these meditation methods. After each reflection session, try to discuss this experience with your child. Ask them what they saw, felt, and heard. Most importantly, do not press or get irritated. If they talk excessive, that's okay. If they're not right into the experience someday, that's all right too.

If you make it seem like a chore, they will retreat. Rather, let them go at their speed. You ought to function as a guide just. Launch discussion on the subject of meditation, and let them know that all of these activities are a form of the method. Eventually, your kid may make use of one of these reflective devices when he or she gets upset.

Ananda is the perfect application to get your children interested in mindfulness as well as meditation. This adjustable meditation application will allow you to experience mindfulness with your kids in a creative way, bringing you better with each other. Go here to learn more.

[voidsung-icefire]

Is shipping ok?

I’m sorry if this might evolve into something really different about half way through. I am very frustrated by things I have been seeing for a while now and I just want to get it out of the way.

So shipping. Yes. Taking fictional characters and imagining them in relationships of various sorts. There are so many different reasons to ship, from thinking that the pairing has a lot of potential in canon, to simply thinking the two characters look attractive and wanting to enjoy some spicy art of them. There are as many different reasons to ship as there are ships. So...is shipping ever a bad thing?

It can be. It can definitely be in certain situations. The first being using it to taunt someone. If the only reason for your ship is so you can shove it in the face of someone you know doesn’t like it, then this is wrong. An example of this would be some people who ship Tracer with Soldier76 only so they can “fight back” against the LGBT community by annoying them with their art work. These shippers are not good. The second situation is a bully shipper, a person that goes and imposes their ship as if it had supreme value over others. Attacking people with different ships online, going as far as to attack creators of the original work because they believe their ship is somehow more important than what the original creator of the characers feels. An example would be certain Lapidot shippers who bullied a Steven Universe writer over the internet relentlessly because the characters were shown to be only friends in an episode she had a hand in writing. These behaviours are unacceptable.

But are their ships the same?

No. Of course not. The reason behind these specific shippers shipping, and the behaviour they had towards others are wrong, cruel and entitled. But others may like these pairings for different reasons and behave in a well mannered, polite and kind way towards others. It is not wrong for them to like these things. It is not the ships that are bad in this case, it is the behaviour of the people that is wrong.

Overall, shipping is ok. It is not canon. It is a fan creation. One can recognize the canon, appreciate it, and still make art of a different ship on the side for a multitude of reasons. And that’s ok. Maybe a canon pairing wasn’t to your taste, like how Katara ended with Aang in the Last Airbender. Maybe you would have liked her to be with Zuko more. You know that Aang was the one to get the girl in canon. You respect that. You can still make art and AU fanfiction where Zuko gets her in the end.

What about McHanzo? Big Overwatch ship. Entirely non-canon. The two characters have never met. McCree displays a very seductive personality with several lines particularly directed towards women. And although he can be bi, he himself stated one of the reasons Ashe was never his type is because she’s rich. And Hanzo is very much rich. And even has that rich kid snooty attitude. Nowhere near a canon ship. But it’s everywhere. And it is allowed to be. People are not doing anything wrong by making their own worlds where these characters can be together.

Maybe Widowtracer? Widowmaker was brainwashed and no longer feels most emotions, including love. Tracer currently has a very lovely girlfriend in canon. So Widowtracer is very much non-canon. But it is still ok to ship these two. For a number of reasons. Some just find them hot. Some want a Widowmaker redemption and see Tracer as a way for her to move on from her past. Some want the three ladies together as an OT3. You can write up various scenarios where Emily leaves Tracer for various reasons, and that is completely fine because that’s what fanfiction is all about. It’s your take on the scenario presented for you.

Maybe Pharmercy? Ah. An interesting one. Also entirely non-canon, but for a reason some more..distasteful people...seem to ignore. We have a bit of a Lapidot situation here, because, you see, Mercy is intended to be with Genji in canon. The two write letters to each other in the Christmas comic (the same comic that revealed Tracer to be gay, first showed Torb’s wife Ingrid, had Jack holding a picture of his ex Vincent, showed Ana’s ex Sam, showed possibly Reyes’ daughter he had with his ex, showed Widowmaker at her late husband’s grave...) and were intended to get voicelines during Valentine’s Day where they would exchange chocolates. A very romantic gesture. Well...some Pharmercy shippers threw a fit, bullied the creators and now those voicelines have never been pushed to the live game. But they still exist. So these specific shippers had bad manners and are thus wrong, but Pharmercy as a ship is still completely fine. If you recognize the canon, respect it, but still want to make art of these two ladies together for a number of reasons, that is completely acceptable.

And what about intercanon pairings, pairings that go as far as to break the boundries of fictional universes to bring characters together. Like Jack Frost with Elsa, or Merida with Hiccup. Characters that will never meet because they are from different worlds made by entirely differnet companies. And those are also ok. Completely fine. Go express yourself. Make art.

Now here’s why I was upset enough to write this. I have long been witnessing immense levels of hypocrisy in the shipping community. Where some ships are put on holy pedestals and considered to have some sort of moral superiority. And all other ships are somehow inherently wrong and the people who ship them, terrible people.

So here’s the question: is it ok to ship a canon gay character in a straight relationship?

And to that I answer...is it ok to ship a canon straight character in a gay relationship?

If you answer no to one but yes to the other....why is that? Why is it okay for one way but not the other, when both are exactly the same. Yes, canon, breaking canon...most shipping is breaking canon. All fanwork is breaking canon in some way because only what the creators create and declare is canon is, well...canon. So why is some canon breaking considered ok when others are not?

I’ve heard the justification that you can’t ship a gay character in a straight ship because that is just a too important trait in a character to break. But why would the other way be ok then? Why is it ok to break the sexuality canon with straight characters but not gay ones? What about genderswaps? Would all rule63 fanart be inherently wrong because you’re breaking an important canon aspect?

What about all the reboots with different looking people in the lead? So let’s say...should Miles not exist because Spider-man was originally white? All the films that cast a woman to play a character that had always been established as male? These reboots have a right to exist. It’s artistic expression. It’s remix. It’s perfectly acceptable. Of course, there will be some backlash, there always is when you reinvent an established character that already has a sizeable fanbase. But ultimately, it is a matter of opinion on if someone likes the new version of the character or not. The new version its self is not right or wrong. It just...is. It just exists and does its own thing in its own way.

There are people who act like certain characters are inherently a certain way because a certain group somehow has....ownership...of the character. That Spider-man can only ever be white because he was white and belongs to white people. That’s not how that works. A character does not...belong to whatever arbitrary group because they have certain characteristics in common.

A character...is personality. It is actions. It is feelings. A character...is someone anyone could potentially relate to. That anyone can potentially like and dislike. It always just...baffles me when people act like they can only like and relate to a character if that character is an exact mirror of themselves. When I was a kid, I liked to watch Danny Phantom. And I thought he was cool. I liked how he had super powers. I liked how he fought the ghosts. I never once thought I couldn’t like him because he was a boy and I’m not. In Overwatch, I main Reaper. He’s an older latinx American man that I headcanon as bisexual. I am literally none of those things. He’s still my favorite. Soldier76 is gay. I’d say since most of the population is straight, it’s safe to assume most Soldier mains are straight. Should they stop playing this character because he’s gay and is somehow now off limits to straight people? No, of course not. Everyone can like or dislike any character.

Everyone can ship any character with any other character.

And some people don’t like that. Some people think...that certain groups...should have different sets of rules.

That’s not how it works. That’s not how equality works.

We are all human beings. If it works one way, it has to work the other way in return. A white character can be reimagined as black, a black character should be able to be reimagined as white. A male character can be rebooted as a female character, a female character can be rebooted as a male character. A straight character can be in a gay ship, a gay character should be able to be in a straight ship.

Some people think that certain groups should have different sets of rules. And that is unacceptable. You are not inherently better or more special or more important than others based on arbitrary traits you have had since birth.

If you think that certain people should have fewer rights based on the color of their skin, you are a racist. If you believe that certain people should have fewer rights based on their gender, you are a sexist. If you believe that certain people should have fewer rights based on their sexual orientation, then you are some form of bigot.

We are all human beings. We are all equal. We have the same rights, we play by the same rules. And if you advocate for something other than that, then you are not advocating for equality, so stop using that as your excuse.

Like the only group that should have special preferential treatment is people with disabilities because they simply cannot function properly if everything was left the same as it is for the majority of people. People in wheelchairs cannot use stairs. They need better access. That’s a given. But even they have the same laws, the same rights.

If you really still think that you deserve special treatment, that you should have additional freedoms, that certain people inherently deserve less than you and should have more restrictions placed on them, based on arbitrary traits they were born with and had no control over, then you are a terrible person. If you are going through a whole load of mental gymnastics and reaching out to find justifications for why you somehow deserve more than other people based on these traits, then you need to get out, talk to some real people and reevaluate certain things. If you can justify giving less freedom to others based on these arbitrary traits, you are opperating on the same mindset as genocidal tyrants.

And freakin read Animal Farm. If you haven’t, I’ll give you the TL:DR

Human farmer is an oppressor to the animals. The animals kick him out and establish equality. The pigs, after some convoluted stuff, decide that they deserve preferential treatment. The pigs thus become the oppressors over the other animals. The cycle continues, implying the pigs will be one day driven out and some other group will find some bs excuse for why they deserve more rights than the rest. Featuring the iconic line:

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”