#a lot of the metaphysical logic to plants is just... i mean it's fiction. it's not going to make complete physical sense.

[orcelito]

ok actually i went on to read chapter 3 of multiple bullets

i fucking HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE the way the women are drawn. this has made me sorely aware of how LITTLE fanservice there is in trigun, bc whoever this guest artist is, they drew... way too fucking much. too many Pert Tits and weird ass shots and this entire thing about a child????? hello??????

the discussion of the metaphysics to plant production is interesting though.

because it really is an important note that plants generating matter goes against the fundamental laws of physics. i'm not sure how much i ascribe to the idea of "negative matter", ESPECIALLY in the form of some weird plant baby...

but then there's the assertion that This is how independent plants are born. "A plant child like Knives and I."

i don't know enough about physics to comment on how theoretically possible that "oscillation in empty space" thing is. "planckian microspace" seems to be a reference to an established study of the "cosmic microwave background". so not entirely baseless, though almost certainly not applicable to this here.

it's interesting. the theories this raises has definitely given me something to think about.

i just wish it wasn't delivered with such blatant fanservice lmao

[t00thpasteface]

Just thought I’d tell ya that i came to your blog for all the Stabby bois (Ezio, Lucien- Ect) and Oblivion love— and then i stuck around for the M.A.S.H. - and since im strange i am trapped in the wondering limbo of your thoughts on Crossovers? And if you’ve ever considered what would happen if it happened between M.A.S.H. and literally any other fandoms??

(Not of course because i’ve looked up Assassin’s Creed/M.A.S.H crossovers before and found nothing but the gnawing desire to hunt down anyone who may have thoughts on it- no siree definitely not me- totally)

I've never really been one for crossovers, personally, at least as actual explorations of fused/swapped settings. The most I ever really care to see is Pokemon teams or Animal Crossing fursonas for whatever other random thing I like, and that's really just eye candy without thinking too hard about any narrative.

I'm very hesitant to do genuine MASH crossovers with anything, or shift the setting into AU territory, because I feel like introducing too many extraneous elements cheapens the message.

Under all the satire and farces, the meat of the show is that war is manmade, gruesome, and pointless. Once you start cross-contaminating MASH's ultimately very grounded historical fiction with the lore of things like Assassin's Creed, where alien-gods created humans and made special artifacts to mind-control them, MASH gains very little and loses a lot. The human element of war, cruelty, and bigotry is blurred or entirely lost in the face of fantastical fictitious concepts like alien mind control, genetically inherited memories, etc., because it provides alternate explanations for the core conflict (the war and the existence of war), thus cheapening the central pillar of MASH.

Note: yes, the show has a couple nods here and there to some degree of metaphysics, like Radar reading Hawkeye's mind in one episode or Mulcahy willing a patient back from death's door in another, but these are not loadbearing concepts and those individual scenes have little bearing on the setting as a whole and the logic it operates on; you could excise those brief scenes and never feel their absence in the narrative(s) the same way you would if you cut out any scene involving the Apple of Eden in AC II.

Because even on a deeper level, besides just a setting and its rules and logic, there's also the issue of crossing-over MASH with things that have an oppositional message. Again using AC, even if the games had absolutely none of the crazy alien sci-fi going on and it was just about following Ezio Auditore's adventures in slaughtering noblemen and beating the shit out of the Borgias, the tone and arcs of that story, and the other main historical stories in the series, is ultimately that of a power fantasy, because that's what the games are designed from the ground-up to be. Crossing-over MASH with another work of realistic historical fiction that still doesn't meet its message— a movie or a book or something where patriotism is a good thing and America represents some noble ideal— would undermine MASH just the same way as adding aliens or vampires or timeloop-magic would.

If I absolutely gun-to-my-head had to make a MASH crossover with some other work of fiction that I like, it would be Catch-22. To be fair, the book is far more absurdist (one character is literally named Major Major Major Major), but it's grounded in the very real horrors of war and the senselessness of human cruelty on both a societal and a personal scale. Yossarian witnesses, and participates in, a very real kind of death and violence. No acrobatics, no magic: just raw murder and suicide. There's no glory in it. There's no magazine-worthy photos of men wading ashore onto a beach or leaning on each other to plant a flag. There's just a bunch of officers and businessmen all trying to make some numbers go up at literally any cost.

Of course, to have Yossarian and the chaplain anywhere near the 4077th means they'd have to be forced back into a warzone, and I don't think they could survive that, so... you probably won't see any MASH-22 fics from me any time soon.

[rdlogo]

DO I BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION AS A CHRISTIAN? There is no “theory” of evolution. There are actually, “theorIES” of evolution. - Lamarckian Evolution - Darwnian Natural Selection - Neo-Darwinian Evolution - Niche Construction - Evolution Through Symbiogenesis - Evo Devo - Process Structuralism - Intelligent Design - a few among others I’ll make a case and talk about a few as concise as possible. DARWINIAN EVOLUTION The theory of evolution spoken today by the common layman is Neo-Darwinian Evolution which, as Theodosius Dobzhansky explains is “Evolution is change in gene frequencies in populations.” This is where many people believe we evolved from fish or apes thanks to randomness/ chances/ probabilities/ luck. This is Neo-Darwinian equation Darwinian Natural Selection + (Gregor) Mendelian Genetics = Neo-Darwinian Evolution But this is not Charles Darwin’s original view that ONLY randomness or chance is responsible for human evolution; that has been interpolated by contemporary logical formulae of scientists. Charles was open minded to the existence of other natural laws that may have directed evolution and limit the amount of randomness that could successful occur. So trust me, Darwinian Evolution Theory is not the only game in town. I believe in the evolution theory that is “goal orientated” so that it be consistent with other coherent world views I hold regarding the “useful fiction” we philosophically have that life has a teleology or goal-orientation as seen in the anthropic principle and the fine-tuning of the #universe to allow for intelligent life on earth 🌏 . For we cannot bear to live with ourselves (especially morally) if our mentality is “survival of the fittest”. Sometimes, the weakest get all the love, attention, protect and get others to die for them in altruism. NICHE CONSTRUCTION ... ...says organisms do not just adapt to environments (from Epigenetics) through the chance of random variations in offspring but that organisms shape environments just as much as environments shape them. In essences, it’s the whole nature vs nurture debate. We co-construct and co-define with our environment, sometimes making the environment adapt to us and not just adapting to the environment alone ... sometimes to the detriment of refusing to adapt ourselves, we adapt our environment to suite us. Animals do it and Humans do it so perfectly as far as us determining factors by which to culturally limit our selection processes. Sometimes the singer gets to pass their genes on, sometimes a the muscle man does. We (including other animals) give our own evolution it’s telos or direction with thoughtful considerations and not mere randomness. PROCESS STRUCTURALISM (a leeway to intelligent design) While Darwinian Evolution and it’s randomness suggest “chance”, meaning that if we rewind biological evolution backwards, we will not get the same speciation and human life like we do nowadays, Christians like me take into consideration that assuming that - universal fine-tuning (of galaxies) remains constant - Epigenetics is true - the Anthropic Principle is a fact I believe that if you reverse biological evolution backwards, all other factors being true to “guide” evolution, we would still end up with similar organism structures and intelligence nowadays. It sounds like intelligent-design evolution-theory from a scientific method of metaphysical-naturalism. But it’s the reverse, it’s the methodological-naturalism part of the argument. One works from the (inferential) top-down scientific approach, the other works front the (calculated/ constructed) bottom-up approach respectively. And since many people hate to have forensic top-down science in biology... let’s just stick to he bottom-up approach of biological evolution called “Process Structuralism” which states that... ...the kinds and types of organisms that we see, their body-plans, and many of their traits are the result of (fixed) natural laws rather than being merely the byproducts of historical contingency and chance genetic mutations. There are certain natural laws that govern the evolution of biological structures and organisms. Robert Bieri said this “If we ever succeed in communicating with conceptualising-beings in outer space, they won’t be spheres, pyramids, cubes, or pancakes. In all probability they will look an awful lot like us”. This includes bigger brain, vertebrates with ability to walk on feet. Standing upright erect etc The biggest proof for process structuralism is the facts of Evo-Devo theory which states that it’s possible to devolve backwards ... but it agrees regarding the convergence of species as well as divergence of species in evolution. In divergence of species, organisms from one common ancestor diverge and go their own way DNA-wise. In convergence species, we see organisms with different common ancestors taking similar attributes such as evolving to glide, climb. The shark and the dolphin have different common ancestors but they are physiologically converging to swim. Or look at the Saber Tooth tiger and the Thylacosmilidae (a creature that went extinct lately from Africa). The Thylacosmilidae is closely related to a kangaroo but the Saber Tooth tiger is closely related to a giraffe. Both evolved on different continents yet, converged in speciation as to co-interact in adaptation and Epigenetics. Also, the evolution of the camera eye converged from different common ancestors across the world and 15 independent cases where the common ancestor didn’t have a camera eye or photo-receptor with a distinct lens but it jut popped into being in the next generation. Here are a few examples of convergence speciation for those interested (find more at Simon Conway Morris Book “Life’s Solution”) - Arthropodization - Euscocial Organisation - Compound Eyes - Courtship Behaviour - Family Structures - Antifreeze Proteins - C4 Photosynthesis - Protease - Peptidases - Cytokinases - Amnioacyl-tRNA - Nicotine Oxidases (I’m not smart enough to know these things guys, I have books 📚 and many teachers lol). This shows that evolution is less of an accident than we give it credit for. Intelligence in species of different ancestors shows convergence too. We see this in apes, crows/ ravens and dolphins. If we human being didn’t evolve to be this intelligent, all other universal factors being constant, other intelligent animals would have evolved to then become like us - kinda like being half-man-half-crow or half-man-half-Dolphine. One could argue that our common ancestor was half-man-half-ape. But that is another debate for another time. My point for now is, evolution appears to have a rational structure, a mind or law or telos or goal behind it - and this is what intelligent design theory suggests although that is not what we’re talking of today in this post. For now, let’s concentrate on Process Structuralism Evolution Theory. Since believing in evolution doesn’t always equal to neo-darwiniansm, can I still be a Christian and believe in evolution... the answer, is yes. Does this contradict with Adam and Eve narrative that God made them from the “dust” of the earth? No - “Dust” could means anything even if it was mud where a fish came from to then become a man. We have scientific researches going on in genetic engineering regarding the mathematical consistencies of believing in a Y-Chromosomal Adam and a Mitochondria-Eve. And with the irreducible complexity of the Cambriam Explosion still standing in the the way to bring doubt on the Darwinian Evolution theory, we have good reasons (not to know) but to rationally “believe” that life (including human life) may not have specieated from a #CommonAncestor but may have popped into being as though they were just planted there by a #CommonDesigner 😜 😁 👨‍🎨 #RestHard – View on Path.