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julemmaes · 4 years ago

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Pinky Promise - Chapter Four

A/N: I love them so much and if they don't kiss in the immediate future I'm gonna sue myself. This is some fluffy-whump shit I don’t even know, I tried to update earlier this time, I hope I didn’t fuck anything up and please please be nice if you don’t like the chapter cause today was hard - we found out my uncle is positive and my parents might be at risk (me as well) and it’s not good. Enjoy!:)

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Word count: 4,779

Nesta sat on the armchair in Cassian's apartment and stared at the void, clutching her hands around her cup of tea.

She had been there for thirty minutes, joined by her boyfriend, and they had both said only a few words. She was terrified at the idea of having to force herself to listen to him and he, unaware of the battle that was raging inside her, seemed not to want to drop this crazy idea.

"I spoke with Feyre this morning," Nesta murmured. Cassian's head snapped up, a not too convinced smile flashed on his lips, inciting her to continue. "She told me I should listen to you."

The half smile turned into a proper one at her words, but he got serious when she gave him a dirty look, "Why?"

"She said that if you've gone so far as to call this insane mission of yours a dream, then it must be important." she held the cup even tighter between her fingers. Cassian followed the movement with his eyes, frowning. "She says I can't clip your wings. That it would do us more harm than the prospectus of you dying in combat, apparently." her sharp tone that of a woman who leaves no witnesses.

He stiffened in his seat, "Nes..."

"I'm not saying that she's right. I'm not going to give you my consent to do shit like that, not yet..." she pointed out, looking him straight in the eye, "But I want you to explain to me how it would work."

She saw the second hope ignited in his irises. The moment he knew that if he used the right words, if he pushed the right buttons, he would be able to make her give in. And Nesta wanted to shut herself down. She wanted to throw the cup against the wall and yell at him how stupid, stupid, stupid he had been to think such a thing.

She wanted to tear her hair out because the man in front of her was the only thing that hadn't brought her down in the last ten years and now he was slipping through her fingers, and she couldn't do anything to avoid it.

"What do you want to know?" he asked, pushing himself forward in the chair and resting his elbows on his knees. He wasn't smiling openly, but she could see that the conversation was making him happy.

She licked her lips and saw him swallow.

They hadn't kissed in about four days and Nesta was counting the minutes since their mouths had touched before they started fighting, wondering if it would be the last one every second that passed.

"I want to know everything." she stammered, "What should you do now, right now, to prepare to join the army?"

He ran his hand through his hair, messing it up, "I'll have to take a medical examination, of course, and do a physical screening." He began, "This will be held in MEPS, which stands for Military Entrance Processing Station," Nesta had a feeling that she would remain silent for much of the explanation, without interfering. Not because she didn't want to, but because she could better absorb the information and all the acronyms he would spill on her.

As if she had been in class and they were explaining yet another protocol.

"I'll have to go there to process into the army." he looked her in the eye, "Basically, I'm gonna spend a night in an hotel, chosen by them. You can come visit me with the others, but you'll have to leave at ten and-" he stopped, arching his eyebrows, "Do you want the details of what I'm gonna do or?

She stopped him, "Please, tell me everything."

Something in her voice must have moved him, because he looked at her carefully before he resumed, "Alright, I'm gonna get a call at four in the morning, I'll get breakfast there at the hotel cause they do that for you," he said as if it were something to be applauded.

She snorted, "I think that's the least."

She wasn't ready to thank an organization that would surely destroy her family just because it would give her boyfriend a free breakfast.

Cassian glared, "And then we're all there at MEPS at five."

The fact that Cassian already saw a "we" in the army made her skin crawl.

"They'll assign me to a liason and that person is gonna explain what the day will entail and what we should expect."

He took a deep breath, easing some of the tension in his shoulders. He did that so often, "Then, there's the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, that I'm gonna call ASVAB from now on. It is a mock test used to screen applicants to ensure that they mesure up to the high standards that are required."

And here it was, his recruiter voice. Nesta didn't think he would mention other propaganda videos, like the night before, but it seemed exactly like he was doing that while saying, "The main reason this test exists is because for Prythian Armed Forces it's important that they employ people who show strong levels of enthusiasm and skill." he winked at her and Nesta had to make an effort not to throw the cup at him, "You know, in order to maintain a great level of service and professionalism."

He puffed his cheeks, with thoughtful expression, tapping a finger on his lips, "There are nine subtests to this thing." And then he started counting on his fingers, "There are General Science, Arithmetic Reasoning, World Knowledge, Paragraph Comprehension, Mathematics Knowledge, Electronics Information, Auto and Shop Information, Mechanical Comprehension and Assembling Objects."

He stood up, took the phone at the center of the coffee table and passed it to her. She hesitantly picked it up and saw only a picture of a book, "There are plenty of sites and a specific book with sample questions I'll need to try out." he pointed the phone into her hands, "Just like a normal exam, same exact stuff."

He joked that he would need her to study, but she didn't change her expression, putting the phone on the coffee table and taking a sip of her tea.

"I'm gonna get a medical briefing and after that I have to get an exam with some physicians," he continued, "Once I'll be done with medical part-"

She interrupted him again, having to stop that dump of information that was being tossed at her, "And at this point you're not enlisted yet, are you?"

Cassian's smile turned soft, "No, baby, this is the moment they see if I'm suitable."

She nodded, "Got it."

He gave her the thumbs up, "Resuming, once I'm done with medical, I'll meet up with a counselor and that's the part where I negotiate a job. We'll talk about this later." he cracked his fingers, sighing, "With that being done, I'll go to the processing section, they'll do what they have to and at this point, I'll take the Oath of Enlistment, where I'd like you to be there."

He looked hopefully at her and Nesta closed her eyes, breathing through her nose.

Cassian stood up, approaching her. When she felt his hand on her leg, Nesta opened her eyes and saw him kneeling in front of her, his eyes glowing as he stared up at her.

"And then I'm gonna come home. To you." he whispered, stroking her thigh with his thumb, "And the first part will be done."

She moved her leg, fleeing his touch. She missed him too much and that hand, whether it was a strategy to soften her up, to make her lower her guard or simply because he missed touching her too, was messing with her brain.

Cassian swallowed noisily, clenching his hand in a fist and bringing it to his side. He stood up and sat down on the sofa, as close as possible to her armchair, "I'll return to the MEPS a second time, to begin my path on the army. A second medical inspection, a second oath and final processing and then I'll leave for BMT, which is Basic Military Training," he concluded.

Nesta looked across the room, toward the kitchen, where they had argued heavily just a few hours earlier. She closed her eyes and lowered her head, suddenly feeling weak.

His words appeared behind her eyelids, as clear as the sun.

We can always have children and pursue the careers we want.

He had seemed so sure of what he was saying.

We don't have to choose.

"Sooner or later we will have to..." she whispered.

Cassian pushed himself towards her, "Sorry I didn't hear that."

Nesta passed her hand over her face, "No, nothing," she sighed, "I was just thinking out loud."

He nodded, biting his upper lip.

"Is that why you've been training so hard?" she asked, remembering only then how much more he had actually started working out in the last few weeks. In the last few months.

Cassian responded positively and they continued talking for hours.

Nesta asked question after question: what would happen now, what would change in the immediate future in their lives, when was he supposed to leave Velaris - when was he supposed to leave here.

He explained to her what they were going to do. He would sign the contract for enlistment in a delayed entry so that he could leave in more than six months. So that they could plan everything calmly without the fear that he might be called to start Basic.

The departure date would have been decided together before he left for MEPS. He would apply for a career in the Transportation, Distribution & Logistics field as a Cargo Specialist.

Cassian had opened a web page on his phone and had her read what a job in that field involved.

"Cargo specialists ensure service members all over the world receive needed supplies and are themselves transferred safely and efficiently to their destinations. They are responsible for transferring or supervising the transfer of cargo to and from air, land, and water transport by manual and mechanical methods. They also plan and organize loading schedules." she read aloud.

Exactly what Declan was doing at that moment, he explained.

Cassian remained silent for a few minutes, allowing her time to assimilate any information he had given her. There was still so much to discuss that Nesta's head was bursting at the thought.

Before she could say anything about the fact that they were done for today, the door of the house opened and Azriel entered, with two vases so big that they covered his face, followed by a smiling Elain.

Cassian puffed and looked at her, whispering so that the others would not hear him, "I can't wait to have our own house," Nesta felt her heart implode, "so no one would ever come into the middle of our arguments to interrupt." she knew that his was a poor attempt to make her laugh, but she had completely turned her brain off.

She was used to talking about these things with him. Her heart hadn't hurt at the idea of the two of them just living together. Her whole body had hurt at the idea that in that house, there would only be her. No one else.

Even if they spent the next six months looking for the perfect house and found it, she would be alone.

Because Cassian would be overseas.

She turned to him, really looking at him and concentrating on the long black eyelashes that were fluttering fast.

She caught her breath, rising abruptly and Elain realized at that moment that she and Azriel were not alone. Both of them seemed more than surprised to find her in their living room, but, exchanging a quick glance, they decided not to say anything about it.

Azriel put the large vases on the floor, taking the smaller ones she was carrying out of Elain's hand, "Hello," greeted both of them and Cassian stood up in turn, turning to the newcomers and giving them a tight smile, "have you read the messages?" Azriel asked, taking off his coat and scarf that Elain had knitted for him.

Nesta smiled slightly.

It was Cassian who shook his head.

"Mor said that Manon arrived early. There was a misunderstanding with the time zones and they got confused with the days, but she's here anyway." Elain sounded excited, "Dinner at hers tonight."

"Fuck." Nesta murmured, running a hand over her face. She grunted in pain thinking of the headache she would have the next morning when she was due back at work. The week she spent at home on vacation had certainly made it easier for her to lay in bed without having to spend hours in the bookshop.

Cassian turned to her, slightly worried, "We don't have to go if you don't want to".

We.

Azriel looked closely at them and when he crossed Nesta's gaze, he sighed.

"We-" she began, "We?" she asked sarcastically, laughing in his face.

She was getting angry and had to try to control all the emotions roaring inside her.

After all the things he had decided without her, there was still an us. Apparently.

Cassian seemed to be in trouble, "I'm sorry," he whispered, "You don't have to come if you don't feel well." he corrected himself, "I'm sure Mor can arrange a meeting with just the three of you."

Nesta looked him in the face, clenching her jaw, "I'm going."

Elain let go an excited scream and went up to her, "I'm glad you're coming too."

They exchanged a quick hug and the older one almost cried.

She didn't realize how much the lack of physical contact weighed on her. And how more than half of that contact came from Cassian.

***

"Hey girls, come on in!" Mor greeted Nesta and Feyre with a bright smile on her lips.

As soon as they entered the house, they smelled the smell of baked pasta and both their mouths watered.

"Amren and Varian are in the kitchen with Manon and Rhys is wandering around the house somewhere, so," she told them, informing them on who was already there. Then she took one look at Nesta, "You're sure you and Cassian can stay in the same room without jumping at each other's throats?"

Feyre giggled next to them, shutting up immediately when Nesta looked at her with an eyebrow raised.

She turned to Mor, "He promised me he wouldn't bring up the army topic tonight and I promised him I wouldn't get mad about anything he said, so there shouldn't be any problems."

The blonde didn't seem so convinced, but then someone called her from the kitchen and her face lit up. She grabbed them both by the hand and dragged them into the other room, where a tall girl, with almost blinding white hair, was standing with a pan in her hand. When she saw them, she opened her eyes wide and flashed them a smile.

Feyre raised her hand in greeting and Nesta smiled tightly.

"Oh! Yeah, sorry," Mor approached Manon, taking the food and placing it in the center of the table.

"Baby, these are two of the three sisters, Nesta," she said, pointing to the eldest, who reached out to Manon to shake her hand, "and Feyre, the youngest of our group."

"Pleased to meet you," murmured Feyre, blushing under the inquisitive gaze of Manon.

The girl smirked, "The pleasure is all mine." then she turned to Mor, "Our Morrigan told me that you were all very beautiful, but I didn't think I'd join a group of models."

Amren, who hadn't taken her eyes off Nesta until then, snickered, "And we're the modest ones, just wait until Rhys and Cass are in the same room and we'll have a hard time breathing from how much space their egos will take up."

Feyre laughed, "You say that as if Azriel didn't know he was the most charming one in the group," then turned to Varian, "Nothing personal," she joked, sitting between Amren and Mor. The boy shook his head smiling, always with his silent manner.

"At least dear Az remains humble and does not go around proclaiming himself Miss Velaris," said Mor.

"It happened only once and I was drunk off my ass."

Rhysand entered the kitchen with his usual grin on his face, sitting next to Nesta.

He greeted the sisters with a quick smile, and she saw Feyre smiling back as if they hadn't yelled at each other five nights earlier.

She looked around, trying to figure out if she had missed something in the last few days or if she was really the only one who just couldn't let things go.

It was true, she wasn't going to cause Mor any trouble that night and she certainly wasn't going to spoil everyone's dinner by arguing with Cassian, but she wasn't going to pretend it was all okay either. Looking at each person at that table, however, it seemed that the fight that everyone had heard had never happened.

They were talking about the university and the jobs they had and Manon seemed more than calm and comfortable in that group. Feyre, strangely enough, was the one who was the most involved in the conversation and Nesta realized with no small apprehension that it must have been because Tamlin didn't let her make new friends so often.

Manon was a flower that had just bloomed in the burnt lawn that was her sister's life.

When the other three arrived, Azriel had one arm around Elain's shoulders and Cassian, behind them, had shiny eyes. Nesta knew very well that he was not crying or drunk. That was the face Cassian had when he was exhausted and only two days of deep sleep could fix that.

Manon and Mor had got up to make introductions and Nesta had burst out laughing when the newcomer had extended her hand to Az and said, "You must be Lucien. You and Elain are a splendid couple."

Elain laughed and shrugged Azriel off, "Oh, no. He is Azriel. Lucien's not coming tonight."

Mor had cast a long look at her girlfriend and Manon had apologized, smirking, as if she had done it on purpose.

Nesta knew very well that the blonde in their group often talked about the relationships-non-relations within their circle, so Manon must have known that no one in that house really believed that Elain loved Lucien. At least, no one in that house believed that Lucien was the right person for Elain.

There was a time when Nesta was convinced that he was going to propose to her. That sweet little Ellie would finally leave the nest and build her family elsewhere, but whenever she was asked questions about their relationship, she seemed indifferent. She cared about Lucien, she did, and it was obvious.

But maybe that wasn't enough anymore.

Azriel had introduced himself for who he really was and then rushed to the table, sitting next to her, red from head to toe. Nesta bent over to him, making a joke about what had just happened, and then whispered, "Thank you." Azriel raised a confused eyebrow. "For sitting here," she pointed to the chair, "I didn't want to have to spend the whole evening next to him."

He smiled at her, clutching her knee under the table and reassuring her that it was not a problem.

When they all sat back down to eat, Manon was looking at her and smiling at her in a reassuring way. Whatever Mor had told her, the white-haired girl knew more about them all than she let on.

Cassian didn't speak to her the whole time, too lost to have a chat with Varian and she was grateful that both of them were sitting on the same side of the table, because she didn't risk crossing his gaze, not once.

Also because she was sure that if he looked at her even for a moment, he would notice that something was wrong and that Nesta was not feeling well.

When Mor put the wine on the table, half of them refused the alcohol, finding a plausible excuse that they would all have to work the next day, but Nesta knew every person at that table like the back of her hand and she knew that Feyre had refused because she would have argued with Tamlin if she drank without him being there. Elain would bring up things that weren't supposed to go out in such a context and she and Cassian would start fighting, driven by the liquid courage in their glasses.

Halfway through the meal, Nesta got up to go to the bathroom and as soon as she shut the door behind her, she sighed closing her eyes.

Cassian was right when he told her that she should not come. Her headache was getting worse and she couldn't concentrate on anything that was being said.

She sat on the closed toilet and put her hands to her face.

She felt her fingertips tingling and her stomach hurt so much that she would not be surprised if she vomited all over the table when she got back.

She had to go home and sleep and not think about anything.

She heard the others burst out laughing and suppressed a groan of pain when her ears started ringing.

She was dying, she could feel it.

She came out of the bathroom staggering, almost as if she were high on drugs.

Leaning on the wall for support she managed to return to the kitchen and covered her eyes with one hand, sheltering herself from the light. She coughed to call Mor's attention and they all turned towards her.

Nesta sighed for the umpteenth time, "I'm really sorry but I don't feel so good and I'd rather go home," she stepped to the table, approaching Manon and offering her a tired smile, "It was nice to meet you, I hope you can come back soon and visit us."

She had no idea what she was saying, the ringing in her ears became louder and louder.

Cassian stood up and everyone's attention shifted to him, "Do you want me to give you a ride?" he was already slipping out of his seat.

Nesta shook her head, grimacing, "No, there's no need-"

"You're sick, you shouldn't drive in these conditions," said Amren, looking at her severely.

Feyre came to her aid, "If you want I can take you. I can go out with them tomorrow," she said, pointing to her friend and her visiting girlfriend. Mor nodded, looking at her pale face and looking more concerned than necessary.

"Nesta," whispered Cassian, "please."

The fact that no one was making fun of him for literally begging her to drive her home made her realize that others had also sensed the emotion in his voice.

She looked him in the eye and nodded slightly with her head.

She saw Cassian sag with relief and then he was gone to the other room, fetching their stuff for her. She arranged with the sisters how they would return home and Azriel reassured her that one way or another they would safely go home. This made her slightly agitated as Azriel wore that stupid sneer he had every time he exaggerated with wine. Elain told her that she would be driving, since both Az and Rhys did not seem to be properly sober, and Nesta calmed down. She was about to thank Mor again when she felt the weight of the jacket on her shoulders.

She turned and smiled gently at Cassian, who had a tired and worried look on his face and shifted his gaze over her cheeks as if he could find the illness on her skin and remove it only by willpower.

He put his arm around her shoulders when she got dressed and said goodbye to everyone one last time, while Nesta, tired of being angry and on the verge of another hysterical crisis, snuggled up against him, letting herself be dragged out of the apartment and into the car.

As soon as she sat down, she leaned her head against the backrest and closed her eyes, yawning.

"Let me," Cassian murmured to her. He looked at her hopefully and it took her a few seconds to realize that he was asking her if he could fasten her seatbelt. She nodded almost imperceptibly, swallowing when he smiled at her and stretched over her to reach the other side of the seat.

She breathed the air deeply and had to close her eyes tightly when his scent ran over her and tears made their way under her eyelids.

She missed him so much.

Cassian closed her door carefully and then went around the car, settling down behind the wheel.

Like the last time they had been in the car together, he was not putting the keys in the patch and she was getting nervous.

She didn't have the strength to argue at that moment and if Cassian had offered to accompany her and she had accepted without too much fuss, it meant that her body knew it too.

"What is it?" he asked her finally, starting the car.

Nesta looked at him from the side, with a lost look, "Everything hurts, I think I might have a fever".

Throwing her a look full of worry, he said, "Why don't you close your eyes for a while? I'll wake you up when we get to your house."

She nodded and leaned her forehead against the cold window.

It wasn't long before she fell asleep, lulled by the gentle humming of Cassian and the rocking movement of the car.

When she woke up, she was no longer in the seat of her boyfriend's Jeep, but someone was carrying her and her head fell right and left as she was being bounced up the stairs. She tried to open her eyes and recognized the stairwell of her building.

She had her head resting on his chest, one arm around her back and one under her legs to support her.

"Sssh," he murmured into her hair, "we are almost there."

She grunted in pain, whimpering and almost crying when Cassian had to put her down to get the keys and open the front door. Her feet touched the ground and she leaned completely against him, gasping against his chest.

She didn't even have the strength to touch him and her arms were dangling along her sides. It was as if her legs had become jelly, she couldn't stand on her own.

"Sweetheart," he called her and she moaned, "I know, I'm sorry," he rubbed his hands on her back, stroking her gently, "but you have to give me a moment to open the door. So I can take you inside and you can sleep."

Nesta couldn't see anything and if she tried to keep her eyes open, everything would spin, but she still heard the hint of panic in his voice and could picture the worry painted on his face. Clenching her teeth she pulled herself away from Cassian and backed against the wall, "Hurry up," she said through her teeth.

The door was opened in a second and then Cassian picked her up without her even noticing. He took her directly to her room and as soon as she touched the bed, she sighed, pressing her face against the pillow.

Cassian took off her shoes and pants, helping her slip into her pajamas and covering her legs with the comforter. When he tried to pull her up to sit down, Nesta twisted, her head pounding.

"I know everything hurts, but if I let you sleep in your bra, tomorrow your ribs will hurt even more," he explained to her, sitting on the mattress, "Lean on me and I'll take care of it, Nes," she laid down, her head turned to the other side.

She heard him sigh and then Cassian's arms wrapped around her chest. She leaned completely against him with her eyes closed as she cried silently. The pain had reached overwhelming levels.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, she heard him murmuring when she sobbed.

Once he had removed her shirt and bra and put the top of her pajamas on, he laid her gently on the bed and put the comforter on her so that she was not exposed to the cold.

She felt Cassian's lips on her forehead a second before sleep took over.

“I promise we’ll get through this, too.”

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@sjm-things @kris10maas @awesomelena555 @sannelovesreading @queenamydien29 @ireallyshouldsleeprn @messyhairday-me @ncssian @observationanxioustheorist @my-fan-side @booksstorm @maastrash @sayosdreams @thedarkdemigod @courtofjurdan @thewayshedreamed @ladywitchling @nahthanks @archeron-queen @sleeping-and-books @bri-loves-sunflowers @thegoddessofyou @ghostlyrose2 @claralady @queenestarcheron

#pinky promise #nessian #pinky promise chapter four #nesta archeron #cassian #acotar #rhysand #feyre archeron #azriel #elain archeron #angst #fluff #fic #acotar fic #nessian fic #acosf #a court of silver flames

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ruby-whistler · 4 years ago

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hii i’m a c!dream sympathizer as well and ur post was super well written, i just had a question. u were saying something along the lines of “we can’t be manipulated by fictional characters bc we know the objective facts.” and i agree with the example you were talking about, if you pay attention to literally any of dream’s last two months of characterization, killing himself in lava and saying he’s being treated fine etc etc is clearly not an effort to manipulate the audience. it’s someone suffering. but what’s the difference between that and falling for c!wilburs “manipulation”/portrayal of himself as a good guy/tragic hero post death? bc it wasn’t intended for the audience, it was for the characters, and overlapped bc we watched his perspective, but we also knew all the objective facts and (some) of us still fell for it. am i just comparing two separate unrelated scenarios?

hello! this is a really good question. the audience can’t be manipulated, that is true. i was against l’manberg up until the election arc, which was so c!wilbur-centric that i had to drop my stubborn conclusion of c!dream not being the bad guy (which i picked right back up as being true, in season one that is, when prison arc came up). l’manberg is honestly such an enigma to me because i never understood the people who were anti-c!dream back in season one. in my opinion, it was corrupt and ridiculous in concept, i just never really found anyone who agreed so i kept my “hot takes” if you will, to myself.

but let’s be honest here; what i used to call back in the day “l’manberg propaganda” was so strong in the fandom during the entire revolutionary war period. you would come in and there would not be a single person on the dream team’s side, because cc!wilbur so perfectly managed to write a story of tyranny and freedom that there was no real reason, or at least so it seemed, for anyone to side with c!dream. this also applied to the characters, with people like c!tommy, c!fundy or c!tubbo being easily swayed to c!wil’s side after he cleverly crafted this deceptive narrative. but we’re talking about the fandom’s opinion, aren’t we?

people fell for it despite dream having streamed his pov of the first part of the war. that’s honestly so fascinating.

i think this isn’t truly “emotional manipulation” as the c!dream antis would call what c!dream is doing. it’s more of the consuming emotional ride that some storylines manage to swallow us in, feeding us things in such a way we perceive them as unconditional truth. appealing to that childish, sees-everything-in-black-and-white, simple worldview. that is why most people don’t see plot-twists coming despite some of them being fairly obvious. c!wilbur’s flowery language and inspiring declarations and countless hamilton references together weave a spider-web the reader falls into. not emotional manipulation per-se, but what are books and stories if not inducing emotions that have no real basis or consequence?

another thing is very clearly social media; it is made in such a way that forces people to force upon each other a singular “right” opinion, this phenomenon being only amplified within fandoms. since dream smp is so tightly intertwined with fanon, and fanon was automatically on c!wilbur’s side since it was the obvious choice, this too made many conform to the overall opinion that c!dream was in the wrong.

so no, despite c!dream and c!wilbur both manipulating people in the storyline, neither really manipulated the audience. i’d like to say that when it comes to l’manberg, the audience manipulated themselves.

in my other fandom analysis post i found a couple of responses where people genuinely thought c!wilbur was the victim, so it is rather clear people are still strongly biased for c!wilbur (in season one specifically) despite everything that he’s done. bias vs. objective evidence is something i really like talking about, because it’s not invalid to have emotions or bias, but it still makes your opinion objectively incorrect. getting rid of bias is important to truly understand a complicated narrative such as the dream smp though, so trying to tear out the bias’ roots in the fandom is not wrong of you if you’re not mocking the other person for their subjective opinion.

so, my answer is, even if you have “all the facts”, you won’t see the whole picture if bias comes into play.

l’manberg’s rise in popularity does make sense to me in a way, although i can’t truly explain it.

#c!dream #c!dream sympathetic #c!wilbur #c!wilbur critical #l’manberg critical #manipulation mention #dream smp #dsmpblr #dsmp fandom analysis

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fatalism-and-villainy · 3 years ago

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Nobody asked for a Qi Ye reaction post but here one is nonetheless (at almost 1500 words.... hello.)

[~spoilers~]

One of the first things I can say is that I love love LOVE Priest’s writing style. It’s hard to say how much of this is a translation thing, because I did get the vibe that this translation was a lot smoother and better than the other cnovel translations I happen to have read. But god!! Her style is very densely allusive, and a challenge to follow at times, but so so beautiful. The story’s narration also shifts perspective a lot in the middle of chapters, which gives it this almost cinematic bird’s eye effect for me (except with internal-emotional states more than visuals). I can see it being the kind of thing that might bother people, but I love it – and I think that it ties in with the themes about the ephemerality and impermanence of life, and the way these little moments are all part of a much bigger sphere of existence.

I also like the way she does humour more than MXTX, honestly? I find the slapstick humour in MXTX’s works to be overdone and distracting from the other story and characterization work going on in her works. Whereas here, the humour landed more and also felt like it tied in more with the actual development of character and themes. Like, for instance, Liang Jiuxiao’s battle with the sable wherein he gets scratched every time and exhausts Beiyuan’s entire supply of antidote – it’s over the top, but also genuinely funny to me, AND I feel the comedic setup of Liang Jiuxiao constantly being an unwanted visitor contrasts very well with the entire heartbreaking scenario involving Beiyuan drugging him for Zhou Zishu, as well as his general progression from a Pure of Heart, Dumb of Ass archetype to being completely shattered by the evil and corruption in the world.

(The Sex and Kissing stuff is also, imo, more sensual and generally hotter to me than MXTX’s stuff – not trying to pick on her specifically, she’s just my only point of comparison for these novels.)

The main romance is ehhh… Mixed Feelings? I loved Wu Xi in all the parts he wasn’t playing the role of “love interest who expresses their love via violent jealousy”, but the parts where he WAS…. woof. Like, I don’t necessarily mind jealousy when it’s internal sensations, or when it’s a very intentionally fucked up dynamic, but I like it less so when it’s couple who’s riding off into the sunset and are the only foil to the general aura of melancholy and sadness in a story? Really hope that’s a one-off specific piece of characterization and not a general Thing for Priest…

I did actually like the gradual development of Beiyuan’s feelings, and the way there’s no Big Moment of Realization – or rather, there is a moment of realization, but it’s not super dramatic, it’s just sort of settling into something that’s been there awhile.

Another problem with their relationship for me though, I think, is how rushed the denouement of the book is, and how many important things are glossed over. Like, okay, they’re riding off into the sunset, but are they actually going to talk about the fact that Beiyuan seduced Wu Xi for Deception Purposes and then drugged him…? Taking advantage of Wu Xi’s very earnest and intense feelings in the process? Like, they stay in the capital for three months of negotiations before they leave, all while Wu Xi hides Beiyuan in his house – there must have been conversations and Relationship Negotiations? And yet we don’t See any of that, we’re just treated to them riding off in a carriage with some cheeky little line about how Beiyuan has the rest of his life to make things up to Wu Xi (presumably by having rough sex)… like ok.

The racism… there was a lot of it in the presentation of Nanjiang! I think the thing that stood out to me though was the line about Wu Xi’s having a kind of intuitive understanding of how people are (an intuition attributed to children, even!) despite not being cultured – it slots so perfectly into the kind of colonial propaganda that posits colonized people as having this innate, intuitive understanding of the world or connection with nature or what have you – but of course they’re not mature, they’re not cultured, they don’t have the capacity for rationality, that we do. To be fair, the line I’m thinking of is also applied to Liang Jiuxiao, but it is of a piece with how Nanjiang is characterized throughout the novel – like, oh, they’re so simple! When they like someone they just get married! It’s presented as a romantic ideal, but in a way that portrays Nanjiang as being Simple and Rustic and lacking the cultural complexity of the Great Qing. (Especially since we b a r e l y see the country or its people on the page.)

(Not to mention the way Wu Xi’s bodyguards from Nanjiang are portrayed as being confused and grossed out by him being in love with a man – contrasted with the commentary about how commonplace sex between men is in the Great Qing. Feels very like Nanjiang gets cast as less “enlightened”?)

I think those elements are also part of why the romance doesn’t fully stick its landing for me – because Wu Xi does take in and consider Great Qing cultural stuff, and incorporate it into his worldview alongside the influence of his home culture – and we don’t see Beiyuan doing something similar in return. He wants to leave for Nanjiang in part because he’s exhausted with capital politics and wants freedom, but why Nanjiang specifically? What does the country mean to him? How’s he actually going to fit in there? (This is another thing that also could have been filled in more with more actual writing about what goes down after that final battle.)

I honestly was deeply moved by Helian Yi. I shed literal tears for that man on multiple occasions. I do feel like I would have benefitted from more actual exploration of his past life-relationship with Beiyuan? Because as it was, I felt like that aspect of Beiyuan’s characterization was kind of informed rather than fleshed out – what did he see in Helian Yi in the first place? And I think the unrequited love would have been more poignant if we’d had more flashbacks to when it was requited.

Also, the possible-incest reveal?? What even was the point of that…? (I know people have posited that that’s why Helian Yi originally had Beiyuan killed, but with that final deleted-on-JJWXC extra I feel like it’s meant to be that he thought Beiyuan was responsible for Su Qingluan’s death. Another thing that should have been elaborated on, plot-wise…)

In general, the ending was very rushed. It gave me distinct “project due the next day” vibes.

ZHOU ZISHU!!!! – my main emotional engagement with this, tbh. I loved what was done with him, loved getting to see more of the atrocities he was behind (haha), loved the chilling “ends justify the means” ideological track he was on, loved how enmeshed he was in Hierarchy and political intrigue and how Carefully he handled himself around his social superiors… yeah.

I am also…. Also losing my mind over the entire Vibe between Zhou Zishu and Liang Jiuxiao. Misplaced devotion… broken pedestals… weird subtextual hard-to-define Feelings... selfishly wanting to hide the worst parts of yourself from someone…. Ahhhhh it’s good. Love those intricate complex homoerotic friendships. If there Exists any fic (whether platonic or less so) that anyone wants to rec… pls do 👀

I have to say, another problem I had with the ending was that I don’t think the tonal dissonance was well-balanced. Like, there’s a very melancholy atmosphere for pretty much everyone except the main couple, and I do understand that their getting away from the capital is the only thing that engenders that happiness (as a big theme of the book is that the politicking in the capital is exhausting and demoralizing – and to my understanding that is similar to the themes at work in Faraway Wanderers.) But I don’t feel as though those two streams were working in communication with each other in the final chapters – I would say that the cutesy scenes with the main couple just felt jarring in contrast to the sadness and regret that permeated the rest of the narrative. I think perhaps they were too saccharine, rather than emphasizing escape and looking forward to different possibilities? I’m not sure. (It also seems questionable to present Nanjiang as an Escape, given that Wu Xi is in charge now?? They’re still right in the thick of politics?) Anyway, this all is why I like the placement of that final extra at the end of the narrative, because it Is a turning back to melancholia that I like to see during nominal happy endings.

#qi ye talk #fandom natterings #book blogging

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stabletwooriginals · 4 years ago

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CHAPTER FOUR: Perspective

LittlePip had the bright idea of looting a building she is way too underleveled for. That's not really a Gamer Joke, as FoE really does seem to take a lot of rules and mechanics from the Fallout games. But it's also funny.

Her opponents are the classic brain-bots we know from the games, made more horrifying with the simple detail of sounding like children. "Come on out. We only want to kill you for trespassing!" also reminds me of the turrets in Portal.

This is also where we get our first reference of the zebras as the enemy, via the intercom playing an ancient, automated message. Oh, and the first mention of the Minstry of Technology too!

The Mr. Handy equivalent of a plasma weapon is said to look like a unicorn's horn. That's cool.

While trying to escape on collapsing catwalks we get the first instance of self-levitation! That's a creative use of the canonical ability unicorns in the show possess. I'm not even sure if a unicorn levitaed *another* pony in season 1. But I think they never levitated themselves? This also gave me flashbacks (or rather flashforwards) to all the cool stuff LittlePip can do later with her levitation, I'm excited to get there.

Oh fuck me with Celestia's forehooves!

The first instance of a PipSwear! Now, I love them. They are iconic. But heck, gosh, darn it if they don't sound awkward when said out loud. Which kinda makes them not work as swears, in my opinion. But for me, they are dumb fun and sometimes that's enough. Her remark that she picked these exploitives up from the raiders is a nice touch. That she keeps them up and builds on them is all her, though.

IRONSHOD FIREARMS How do you like *them* apples? I didn't get it.

So, I am not a native English speaker. I know this saying, but I was curious where it comes from. *Apparently* that's not really known, but according to this article the phrase was used like this in 1895 already. However, it was also used to refer to anti-tank granades in World War I, for their apple-like appearence. Since granades also look like apples in FoE, I will take the risk and say that I think I do get Ironshod Firearms' slogan.

The anti zebra propaganda found in the factory overmare office is both creative and glossed over. The slogan ("Better Wiped than Striped! Join the Equestrian Forces Today!") is heavily reminicient of the German rhymes of similiar racist nature from the world wars. And the depiction of the zebras as some dark creatures with evil glowing eyes is over the top, but only a reread might reveal this as the neon sign it is, as the zebras have not yet been introduced as the enemy force properly.

In the overmares office Littlepip finds a ton of useful items, from spark batteries , a StealthBuck and gum (which could be the first instance of MintAls, altough not called such, as LittlePip doesn’t know them yet (and if they aren’t, she finds some later in this chapter in an abandoned camp under a bridge), to the one, the only: little macintosh. This revolver will become LittlePips iconic weapon that she keeps until the very end of the story. Presumably made for or at least by Applejack, so this also gives Littlepip a neat little tie to one of the original shows main characters.

Hacking the terminal LittlePip discovers that she could have opened the safe she picked with a bobby pin remotely from there. Intentionally or not, this is a dig at Fallout 3′s design philosophy of giving you several ways to open locks, making only learning one of them enough, while skilled characters are left feeling a bit overqualified.

Leaving Ironshod Firearms, LittlePip admits to having given up on finding Velvet for now and being set on just exploring the world instead. Again, very Fallout 3 in my book.

Past a playground that became a graveyard for little ponies (dark!), she finds a “Sparkle~Cola” vending machine. This becomes LittlePips favorite drink and when I first read it, I was super happy about that for some reason. The book keeps mentioning how she sipps on carroty cola sometimes and every time I remember thinking it was a fun detail. I have no idea why.

Resting on a bench closeby we get a description of this poster:

(Art by Droakir - DeviantArt)

First mention of the Ministry of Morale, first instance of Pinkie Pie and a really fun description of how her graying mane makes it look like a candy cane. Like the poster on the zebras, this is also great, classic propaganda writing. Obviously it is a reference to the episode Green Isn’t Your Color, but while I feel that it is referencing some real life propaganda, I do not know a specific one.

Watcher suddenly is back, helpfully explaining that the MoM is “another well-meaning idea that was so much better on scroll.” What a fitting description of pre-war politics in FoE.

Getting jumped makes LittlePip call back to the slaver, that complained about sprite-bots sneaking up on ponies. If I recall correctly this will be one of the biggest sources of fun in FoE: Callbacks like this, that help paint the world in your mind by connecting the dots for you. Im certain some find this aspect annoying, as they rather enjoy doing that work themselves, but as a casual reader (of a very long story) I always welcomed it. I will also stop pointing them out from here on, unless they strike me remarkable in other ways.

A quick reminder of the raider armor she is wearing and some foreshadowing how it makes her look like “a nightmare pony”, before Watcher offers that she needs to find her virtue. This will be as important as in the original show, but also almost take LittlePip until the end of the story to really figure it out. Right now, she doesn’t quite believe him and his connection to the sprite-bot drops. Now we get a different voice from the radio the sprite-bots play, when Watcher is not in control of them. Similiar to President Eden of the Enclave in Fallout 3. This however, is Red-Eye, altough not named yet, giving a motivational speech about the posibility of rebuilding Equestria. Naturally, this confuses LittlePip even further, having seen no trace of any leaders or reconstruction efforts.

Well, technically she has seen slavers, so, unbeknownst to her, she actually has seen a part of Red-Eyes plan.

But it gives her the idea to look for settlements and actually finds one in the distance. A undamaged looking caravan is moving away from it, all in all a great disovery.

While a fun and memorable scene in itself, what follows is meant to reflect a corner stone of LittlePips character. As she approaches the settlement she gets mistaken for a raider by her barding and shot at. Remembering the caravan she collects her strength and stands up to her agressor, threatening to kill them if they attack the others. This reveals the misunderstanding -- her attacker thought she was endangering the caravan -- and LittlePip exits the chapter loosing consiousness from her insuries.

Footnote: Level Up. New Perk: Egghead -- You will add +2 skill points each time you gain a new experience level.

What a chapter! While it might feel like not much happened, so many pivital and iconic elements were introduced here. Even if a lot weren’t named yet. Like Calamity! It does feel weird that LittlePip just admits on giving up on Velvet like that, though. On my first read I didn’t mind, because I just enjoyed how similiar the experience felt to playing Fallout 3, which I liked more than any other entry at the time. Now it seems odd, but there are a lot of other things to focus on and enjoy in this and the coming chapters.

#fallout equestria #fallout #mlp #my little pony #littlepip #ironshod firearms #reread #reading #calamity #red-eye #ministry of morale #ministry of technology #applejack #pinkie pie #braeburn

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cosmi-trashbin · 6 years ago

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Thoughts on Moon and Eclipsa as Queens

Think of the wand as thematically tied to Star’s role as the princess of Mewni. While the wand transforms into a design that best fits and reflects the personality and aesthetic of the current wielder, it’s also tied to the heavy responsibility, expectations, and history of Mewman royalty. A Mewman queen benefits from being imaginative and creative, but she’s limited by the expectations of her role as queen and the needs of her kingdom. The tie-in book showcased that most queens had difficulty walking on this particularly shaky tightrope: Every one of them was molded by the current status of their kingdom, their perspective on what it took to be a proper queen in some way, shape, or form, and how much they personally cared about/were invested in their role as queen. Some weren’t fit for the crown period because of how flighty or selfish they were. One queen was totalitarian. And some queens did what they felt was absolutely necessary.

Discussing Queen Moon

Queen Moon was an example of the last category: She was thrust into the role at a very young age and molded herself into the idealized picture of what she believed a proper Mewman queen should be. She followed every rule and mandate as closely as she reasonably could. She’s elegant, coiffed, and stern, but fair. She tries to be calm and collected for the sake of her people; to maintain a comfortable, but efficient status quo for her kingdom. But, a problematic part of maintaining this status quo was either burying and/or upholding the previous policies/effects of previous queens in regards to monsters.

Though, as the series has continued, viewers discover that Moon isn’t entirely rigid or unsympathetic. The bumbling, doofy King River is an example of the warmer, more tender side of Moon’s personality. River is a terrible king, but his importance as Moon’s partner shouldn’t be understated. His kind words, goofiness, and warm personality played a big role in helping Moon settle into her role and responsibilities as queen; he’s her ongoing emotional rock and moral support. The reason I bring this up is that it’s an example of Moon trying to balance personal happiness with being queen. She could have picked a king that was beneficial for strictly political relations or even specialized in overseeing a specific part of the kingdom. She even could have chosen to stay an independent, self-sufficient queen (ala Solaria). Instead, she chose to take on River as a figurehead while she runs the kingdom. It’s the one decision that she, arguably, received a lot of criticism for. In short, there’s a breathing, feeling person behind the crown.

When Queen Moon relates to Buff Frog on the common ground that they’re both parents, it shows a shift in her thinking. She’s not an unapproachable, unsympathetic figure. This is further showcased when she tries to reach out to Ludo and even tries to help Eclipsa with Meteora. Moon knows what it takes to be an effective and liked ruler, but apparently, she’s also willing to change and adopt new ideas. Moon was definitely willing to work on means to improve relations between Mewmans and monsters. She might use her reputation/influence as queen to slowly and carefully convince the people this is a very needed, very positive change for the kingdom.

The caveat is the controversy surrounding Moon and her lineage as the “imposters” in the royal bloodline. The first two episodes of season 4 reveal that Moon has become the poster child for the Piefolks’ very open, blatant contempt towards Mewni, if not all Mewmans. They readily hand-wave and mock River and Star for being ‘full-blown’ Mewmans while praising and aggrandizing Moon. Confirming that Moon is Piefolk validates their prejudices in some kind of twisted, backwards way. Of course they want to keep Moon herself around to push and fuel propaganda (which could lead to Piefolk trying to ambush and overthrow Eclipsa).

River’s comments about ‘dirty peasants’ and Piefolk comments about Mewmans bring up questions about what other peoples have race tensions/conflict with Mewni and what kind of impact/fallout Mewni’s class system has had. Mina Loveberry’s introductory episode pokes at some of these ideas, too. Since Mina was a super-soldier during Queen Solaria’s reign, she’s a living relic of previous Mewni sentiments and ideas: She approached Earth with a very imperialist, Manifest Destiny kind of mentality. “Mewmans are superior, so it’s our right to conquer!” Star’s response is indicative of how much Mewni has changed since those times. At the very least, Mewni royalty try to approach most kingdoms and peoples with some measure of decorum, diplomacy, and respect. The sad thing is that this approach was rolled out by the time there was a deeply cut, ingrained series of ideas such as “Monsters are inferior” and ��Certain peoples are and always will be lower class by default.”

In short, Queen Moon’s rule was the textbook definition of what’s expected of a Mewman queen. Without the context of her personal new revelations about Buff Frog or Ludo, her reign was the last example of a classic Butterfly queen.

Discussing Queen Eclipsa

When Eclipsa was next in line to be queen, she was already high-key rebellious by dating monsters in secret and practicing “controversial” magic. In some ways, her role as queen was peripheral to her personal pleasure and hobbies. She had very progressive ideas and the potential to dramatically overhaul then-current kingdom policies, but it feels like she couldn’t or didn’t act on them. It’s a bit ambiguous what her personal take on being queen is, but she seems content with the idea of just being able to live a peaceful, quiet life with her baby and monster husband. When she encountered rampaging and fully realized Meteora, note that she was trying to talk Meteora down and explain the delicate, complicated mess behind why Meteora couldn’t just stomp in and declare herself queen. Eclipsa was willing to help stop Meteora despite the fact that Meteora, technically, was the rightful royal princess. She realized how different current circumstances were in Mewni and what has to happen to keep the peace.

When she was an upcoming queen, Eclipsa was already locked into bureaucratic obligations when she was expected to marry Prince Shastacan. Her chapter in the official spellbook reveals that Globgor gave her an ultimatum: Run away with him or stay in Mewni. She chose to run away with Globgor and, presumably, start a new life among monster society until she was caught by the Magic High Commission. Globgor’s ultimatum shows that Eclipsa was forced to chose sides at the time. Globgor is the unknown variable for what Eclipsa’s reign would have been like. While I don’t have a lot to work with for determining the nature of their relationship, I get the impression that Eclipsa would insist on them being equal in regards to ruling; either that, or Globgor is the more assertive, dominant party in their relationship.

By herself, Eclipsa seems to just be going with the flow. She opened Mewni to monsters and her reign so far has been reshaping Mewni’s culture and encouraging a melting pot between peoples. Though, beyond that, the concern about dissatisfied peoples like the Piefolk or even the continuing tensions between Mewmans and monsters has been brushed under the proverbial rug. Eclipsa isn’t dumb, but she needs some pretty intensive PR to back her up. As far as Mewni is concerned, she’s an unabashed monster lover and would pick monsters over Mewmans in a heartbeat. In short, she’s going to be viewed in pretty black and white terms without the gravity or nuances of her personal story and circumstances. From the episode titles released thus far, Eclipsa’s definitely going to work on just that. But, again, the atmosphere surrounding Eclipsa’s current reign is tied pretty heavily to what Globgor is like. He has enough importance in Eclipsa’s personal life that she’d weigh his opinions and her happiness with him that she might not act as rationally as she would solo.

Ending Thoughts

There’s so much emphasis on the balance between a queen’s personal life and her role as queen. For Moon, there’s glimpses of the role being a mandate or obligation. In the episode where Moon was wandering around the pure magic dimension, viewers see a surprisingly carefree, almost childlike side of her. Moon was allowed to “cut loose” for an episode and it poses the question of what she’d be like if she weren’t bogged down with royal responsibilities. For Star, there’s been hints at what personal hobbies and freedoms she feels like she’d have to give up as queen. Her mom gave up everything; Star is fighting for a balance between her eccentricities and living up to expectations. For Eclipsa, the biggest issue was her decision between duty and following her heart.

Most of Star Vs. queen characters’ stories study the pressure of being born into a position of power and responsibility. Having a list of previous queens to compare and contrast opens the floor for discussing the importance of having the right person in a prominent political office and how their personal morals affect what they do while in office.

#svtfoe #star vs the forces of evil #queen eclipsa #queen moon #eclipsa butterfly #moon butterfly #svtfoe eclipsa #svtfoe moon #svtfoe globgor #eclipsa and globgor #globgor #analysis #cartoon analysis

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 5 years ago

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crime and disorder

Previously on Impeaching the Motherfucker: Donald “Individual-1” Trump tried to use the Oval Office to shake down Ukrainian President Zelensky for a public announcement of bullshit investigations, which Trump wanted to use to discredit American citizens and intelligence agencies.

You may have seen people compare Trump’s scheme to have the Ukrainian president announce investigations into his Democratic opposition to James Comey’s various interventions in the 2016 election. This comparison is not wrong. If anything, it understates the similarities.

The story that former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to feed Zelensky about a member of Joe Biden’s family was basically fascist fanfiction by a guy named Peter Schweitzer. Schweitzer worked for Steve Bannon, who led the Trump campaign for a while, at the racist agitprop website Breitbart. His books are funded by the Mercer family. (If you’re struggling to place that name, they also finance the Facebook data thieves at Cambridge Analytica.) As Schweitzer’s lies were being used to pressure Zelensky to abuse law enforcement, they were also being fed to the mortifyingly credulous New York Times. The NYT validated the smear, which gave Giuliani and his crew leverage to increase pressure on law enforcement to take action in the hopes that this would create more news.

These exact same people pulled these exact same moves in 2015 and 2016. Of course, that time the Democratic frontrunner was Hillary Clinton, and Schweitzer’s lies were about the Clinton Foundation.* Those lies were debunked as quickly and easily as the stories about Biden, but they were still validated and spread by the mainstream media, in particular by the New York Times. These stories were picked up by the various disinformation trollbot networks throughout the 2016 election and used to drown out the serious stories about Donald Trump’s many financial crimes. And it gave a partisan faction in the FBI an excuse to open an investigation into Clinton.

Giuliani, by his own admission, was also the Trump campaign’s connection to the FBI’s New York field office in 2016. Now he’s telling the press, on the record, that his scheming in Ukraine is an attempt to manipulate the Department of Justice into investigating Biden.

It’s important to remember what happened from there. Short-term, we need to prepare ourselves to keep it from being so effective next time. The impeachment hearings might have discredited this particular line of attack against Biden, but something like this will happen to whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being. Long-term, progressives need to start holding grudges the way conservatives do, not least because our grievances are real. And we have to do this for ourselves because, let’s be honest, most of the mainstream and nearly all of the “leftist” media would rather be rounded up at gunpoint and sent to a gulag than admit they fucked up in 2016.

We remember the EMAILS investigation because it was so public, but in fact, the FBI was also investigating the Clinton Foundation, despite the Department of Justice telling them there was no case, specifically because their “evidence” was just trash from Schweitzer’s book.+

An FBI investigation is a serious thing, even if the director doesn’t use it as a pretext to throw a presidential election. That’s why the FBI is supposed to take it seriously. They’re only supposed to open an investigation if they have an an actual reason. (To state the obvious, debunked conspiracy theories by a political propagandist are not an actual reason.) Then they’re supposed to shut the fuck up and actually investigate, not preen for the media about how great they are for doing all this manly investigating. This is both to protect the reputation of the person they’re investigating and because you can usually investigate something better if you minimize how many people know you’re investigating. When they’re done, they’re supposed to either charge someone with a crime or to close the case and leave the person alone.

The FBI clearly did not take the Clinton Foundation investigation seriously, because if they had been taking it seriously they never would have pretended there was a case there at all, but it was still a serious thing. The existence of this “investigation” bolstered these false propaganda narratives which were intended to distort a presidential election, and which publicly disparaged a world-class charity that has saved millions of lives around the world.

Worse, the bullshit metastasized within the FBI. It ate into the time and attention of senior leadership, when they needed to be making some genuinely complicated decisions concerning the national security threat posed by the criminal syndicate known as the Trump campaign. Instead, they were finding out what happens if you give a mouse a cookie. The faction of the FBI who were abusing their power to hurt Clinton and help Trump seem to have been emboldened by the indulgence. FBI leadership fell into the bad habit of feeding the press, especially right-wing media like the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, hints that something crime-y was going on with the Clinton Foundation. A week before the election, after Comey had upended the election with his letter about the emails, “sources” at the FBI were telling a Fox News anchor that there were about to be indictments over something at the Clinton Foundation.

Reading between the lines of various reports, it looks like these pressures within the FBI to support the Clinton Cash propaganda helped desensitize Comey and his bros to the idea of taking dramatic public action against Hillary Clinton. It never occurred to anyone else that they would pull a stunt like this, not because everyone trusts the FBI so much, but because it is so far from what they do. Nobody expects the feds to start wearing mashed potatoes to the office instead of suits, either, not because they have such great fashion sense, but because it’s too bizarre to occur to anyone. But if there were a handful of agents crabbing every day that they should wear mashed potatoes to work, and those agents kept forwarding around a drumbeat of media speculating that maybe they would start wearing mashed potatoes to work, maybe they start to think it’s not too weird of a compromise if they just start wearing mashed potatoes instead of jackets and ties.

Law enforcement abusing its power to influence elections is bad for democracy. But it’s also bad for law enforcement. As long as everyone understands the FBI shouldn’t be expected to get involved in partisan politics, there’s no incentive for politicians to waste time trying to pressure them. But once they caved to this pressure from right-wing media, it showed that they could be manipulated by at least one side, and the Republicans have been hammering them relentlessly ever since. Trump doesn’t beat up on the FBI – or, for that matter, the NYT – because he’s afraid of them. He beats up on them because he knows, from experience, that it works.

Since all that happened, Trump’s had time to purge his dupes from FBI leadership and replace them with people he believes will be even more likely to follow his unethical directives. So that’s not great.

One major difference in Giuliani and Schweitzer’s scheme this year is that they’re trying to outsource their dirty work to Ukraine, which is a lot riskier and a lot more work. In a weird way, this is a slightly encouraging sign for 2020. Even if the real motivation is that Trump is fucking around with Ukraine to please Putin and smearing Biden is just a side benefit, I doubt it would be happening like this, because you don’t actually need to bring your clown sidekick and his clown sidekicks into your clear-cut impeachable offenses. It’s entirely possible that they’re going global because they don’t think the FBI will throw all the rules out the window to help them this time.

On the other hand, the fact that they’re changing the pattern means it could easily get even worse. Right-wing ratfuckers have already attacked at least two 2020 Democratic presidential candidates with false claims of sexual violence. At this point, it’s still the JV squad,± but once we have a nominee, the professionals are going to get involved. It wouldn’t even take Giuliani’s subtlety and finesse to get law enforcement involved, either, just one pro-Trump sheriff’s office in an area the nominee could have conceivably visited. I don’t have a concrete idea of what to do if things take this particular turn, but I’m legitimately worried that we need to brace ourselves for it.

*Substantively, this comparison is unfair, because Burisma is an oil and gas company with a mixed ethical record, while the Clinton Foundation is a clean, transparent charity that has saved millions of lives. The fact that Schweitzer and the New York Times describe them nearly interchangeably says it all.

+The existence of not one but two flimsy investigations into Clinton actually discredits both of them even further, because it shows a pattern of the FBI investigating a person rather than a crime.

±It’s easy to treat the Warren thing as a joke because this particular ratfucker faceplanted so badly, but the lie itself wasn’t funny. Escalating consensual BDSM into a vicious, traumatic beating isn’t some wacky cartoon trope, it’s a type of abuse that real people have experienced.

#mainstream media #disinformation #impeachment #ukraine #trump #fbi #election 2016 #election 2020

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icharchivist · 5 years ago

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dkjfhd i really can’t get Gentaro’s part’s translation i’m sorry, i’m legit stunned

Gentaro’s part in the ensemble songs had rarely been that much analyse worthy (i love you bae but you know i’m right), aside from him mentioning Jekyll and Hyde in Hoodstar but that’s about it.

Everything else analyse worthy about Gentaro comes from his personal song, his verse in SMT, BBB and the entierety of Stella, along with the drama tracks and the manga. But the ensemble songs rarely dropped major information about him.

But there... I’m just seriously stunned because it is a topic i’ve discussed about Gentaro multiple times in the past, but by litterally grasping at straws, or so i thought. I was overanalysing parts of Stella as in “okay it’s a fiction but what if Gentaro means it as a way to project on our real world”for exemple.

A lot of things were conclusions i ended up having from complete overreading, of being puzzled by the way Gentaro reacted when his editor called his work fiction, this sort of things.

Like, it was THERE but it was things I clearly always saw as me overreading to hell and forth.

And his new verse... Just comfirm everything i’ve been thinking in very “not a lot of room to dispute” way.

and i’m... just stunned? I feel very pretentious to think “i was right” while like there’s still elements of darkness and all and i could still have a marging to be wrong, but.... this is so odd to me...

Anyway i’ve worded my thoughts a little better on his verse when i posted it on twitter so under cut more specifically the reasoning i had

Things i’ve been thinking about regarding the Government and Gentaro those past few months that Gentaro’s verse seems to address: (via this translation)

I believe that part of Gentaro’s lying habits, aside from coping mechanisms and ways to protect himself, comes from also the possibility of being able to expose the truth more easily. Since everything he might say can be interpreted as a lie, he can slip some truth out of the open and be safe as people wouldn’t know if it’s true or not. Which was something I thought of about the whole Scenario Liar situation where he exposed the story of his friend, whom we KNOW is in an hospital, yet claimed it to be a lie.

As a result him writing about the child trafficking in chapter 6 I think? Which we know is a thing that happened under this government, and him showing trace of knowing it is not just merely fiction, aligns with this idea of: he has exposed himself enough as unreliable that he can drop the truth for everyone to see, and it’s to them to pick up if he’s lying or not.

He “puts himself as a madman”.

As for the propaganda I believe the gov’ using the rap battles is strong propaganda: they didn’t care about the Rap Battles but once TDD, which was powerful enough to dismantle the gov, dismantled, they MEDIATIZE the Rap Battles? I think it’s Samatoki that brings up that it is just kinda exhibiting them like playthings, things you don’t take seriously because you associate them with entertainment. By doing State Rap Battles, the gov is trying to lessen the impacts the bands could have if they united – which would also feed on the theory of “TDD was broken up because it became too powerful”.

This idea of propaganda is also present in Stella, as Gentaro specifically laments about the people who had “hypnotized history so people remain trapped by their social status”. Which seems to be a call out specifically to the government.

Likewise considering the kingdom Dice runs away from in Stella seems to also echo the current government (especially with focus on the door to power since Chuu-oku had been identified by its door a lot). “it is like playing to a crowd”

So “this stage that spread propaganda” would align with that specific idea.

“Literature means cutting off one’s nose to spite their face” we KNOW Gentaro knows stuff about the gov enough to be watched. Like this specific wording would imply something similar to the child trafficking story: to take an event the government DID, and send it back to its face in public by exposing it in a book.

Then the gov cannot exactly act can it? If it reacts, it means there is truth to Gentaro’s statement. If they don’t, the word is out there, though.

So Gentaro put himself as unreliable because it means if the Gov takes him seriously, it means he’s saying the truth. If not, yet he may have planted the idea in some minds who may question what the gov is doing.

That had been my reading for Gentaro since Stella came out and I think the new song kinda align a lot with that idea if that makes sense??

#i'm... in very dead fandoms in general so me overreading never actually paid off #which is like hey fun i can overread whatever i want and canon would take years to disappoint me or not lmao #but here with an active franchise....#this translation rEALLY works toward what had been my reading #and I don't know the fandom much so idk if??? people read it like that too?#i've rarely seen Gentaro content addressing any of that though aside from a couple people i talked with #i'm so... confused.... i'm not used to my reading paying off in some ways #ichablogging hpm #ichameta hpm #ichatalks about hpm #Alternative Rap Battle #also thanks god i messaged my friend the translation #(the one i wrote those 170 pages of overanalysis to start with)#and yeah she's freaking out too bc this was what we've been discussing for months #so yeah i'm not hallucinating this was.. legit... my readin for months #i'm just WOW.

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fanresearcher-blog · 5 years ago

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My Criticism of Planet Puto

You know, just in case HC never finds about my criticism...

“Hello HC! My original criticism was lost…unfortunately but I`m determined to get my message to you. I wrote it on Word first before posting it in your submit. If you managed to get my old submission, then I`m glad that it worked, but if it didn`t then that`s why I have this. So HC, I wanted to do this for a long time but I needed to be composed of my thoughts first. Now I`m ready.

In this submission, I want to talk about the character development of your personification characters and character design. I`ll also talk a little bit of the lore by the end of the post. It is not intended for hate, it is just criticism. I am also aware that Planet Puto is more like random posts instead of comics or something. The reason I feel like giving criticism is for HC`s improvement in some stuff and to voice my concerns. Before I write my criticism, I would like to praise HC for her/his dedication to creating that group of Actor AU (I don`t know their names but it`s the Aswang lady and her Spanish-y husband and they had twins). I love your work since it has good art but mostly it`s because you post so often. Reading your posts become a part of my everyday routine.

So before we get to the specific criticism and tips, I`ll talk about my general problems with the personification characters. It appears to be, that the characters are used for meaningless fanservice. When I`m scrolling through the Planet Puto archives, once in a while I will see characters drawn with sexy poses or they have ship tease with someone. If it is part of their character, then that would make sense. So is everybody…smutty? It seems like whenever there is a major foreign country, they would be shipped with Elena or Emilio. There are entire pages filled with random pick-up lines from Emilio and all the art of Elena with the guys.

I`m not saying that shipping is bad. I think it is perfectly fine for some countries to be attracted to Emilio or Elena. What I don`t understand is…why? Why do those countries find Emilio or Elena attractive? What do they see in them? Please don`t say, that they love the Phils because Emilio is pogi and Elena is maganda. If that is the reason, why they love those twins, then that is not real love at all. Also…they can`t just be compatible because of politics! It is like shipping someone with another person just because they had a good business deal. It also makes me wonder if a country can even decide who to love instead of who they are told to by their bosses. It`s sad no?

It would be best that you create the character before the ship. If you create the ship before the character, they may end up not being their own person. Also pair the ones, who are naturally compatible. It`s like food combos, there are basics like cheese and tomato go so well but when you experiment you will also find out that green mango tastes great with bagoong. Relationships, like food combinations, should be compatible. When people talk about food combos, you hear “The tomato`s freshness balances out the saltiness of salted egg” or “A bit of chili actually brings out the flavor of vinegar”, so characters should be like “He has a great mind but sometimes he can be really tough. She quite emotional but she can be the best friend you can ever have. Together, his heart softens and he learns how to get along with other people. She learns how to keep cool and keep things together now.” Characters by themselves are great, like peanut butter bread and jelly bread, but when you put them together, they are even better.

Be careful of red flags! If the relationship is starting to break boundaries, border on abuse, and toxic behaviors, please stop. It will just give the wrong message to the audience if you ship something like that. After all, in a food combo, if one of the ingredients are rotten it would make you sick. The pair should not be toxic to each other. You can still portray abusive relationships, but please don`t romanticize or encourage it because it`s not okay. It will never be okay.

You must develop them first, though. After you got their character, then you can start thinking about shipping. They must care about each other. That is the bare minimum for a good ship. In psychology, people are more likely to be attracted to someone they have in common with but not too much in common. The thing they have in common could be anything like background, motivation, interests, etc… After that, be careful not to make them too similar or too different. To add special garnish, if the work has a theme, then it would be best if that ship reflects opposite or different sides of the theme. That would make everything really juicy. Remember to not force it, if they can`t match no matter how hard you try, then they weren`t meant to be. Move on. The best ships will just come into place.

Summary for writing ships:

-They must care for each other

-It must be natural

-They must have something in common but different enough

-Experiment

-Avoid Red Flags

My other general problem is random sadness. I`m okay with sadness, but the sadness in Planet Puto is very random. Everything is happy then boom! Sadness. I don`t understand what it is supposed to mean, what am I supposed to know here? There is a pattern of using historical events for angst. It would be much better if the angst was more built up and more meaningful if the characters had character.

Let`s start with the protagonist, Emilio. Of all of the characters, he is the one I have problems with the most. I find it hard to discern a characteristic to him other than a pabebe, a flirt, and a pushover. I`m sorry if that is insulting, but that is my own impression. He may not be like that, but the way he is portrayed gave me that vibes. So what makes a protagonist likable and memorable? They should:

Struggle: Hmm…does Emilio struggle? I have been searching all the pages with Emilio in them to know. None of those posts indicate really big things. I try to dig deeper like a Language Teacher but it is hard for me to see the meaningful struggle. All I see is meaningless angst. The problems that Emilio faces are politics, love life, and history. Politics, I understand that it is hard to live with such a corrupt government. What I need to know is…how does this affect Emilio personally? Normally, citizens of this country will not feel affected by politics. Sometimes they will be affected, but most of the time they would live most of their lives without worrying about this. It would be best to show how it affects Emilio on a personal level, so I can feel why.

Love life, it is now a more human problem. I wonder why personifications aren`t marrying each other by now. So many feelings and ship tease! Are they forbidden? If that is so, then that would be impractical. There are so many countries in the world, so at least one government permits a country to marry another country. I also wonder why Emilio only dated Brunei. I remember you said it is because of the union of the Kingdom of Tondo and something Brunei. So does that mean, whenever a country is joined by political alliance or merging of kingdoms, are they are automatically in love or dating? Heartbreak happens, it is a human thing but I hope it isn`t too much of a problem. There is such a thing as move on, right?

History, now that could have a lot of potential. I think there is a lot of creative potential with this. The problem is…how do you portray it properly? The best thing to do is to look in history books and determine what he would be doing at a place in time. Give him a backstory based on the things taught in history. I know you are doing that, but I think it is unrealistic that Emilio is everywhere at once. How is he in a lot of historical events!?! There has to be an explanation. I think it could be answered by knowing his occupation exactly. What is his skills? What are his abilities? Does he have powers to help out? What does being a personification mean? These things could really help me understand how the plot works.

(Out of topic: What is being a personification? How immortal is he? What if we cut off a personification`s head? Would they die? What if we chopped off their fingers? Would they be crippled or would their limbs grow back eventually? In your WWII drawing, Elena asks Japan to finish off her useless brother, so are you saying he can die? What if no one saved Emilio?

Do personifications get paid for being personifications? Can they resign? Do they have insurance or vacation days? Do they get a bonus? Do they get senior citizen`s discount, after all, they are older than our grandparents? Why do countries have a girl and boy version? Let`s say Emilio resigns from being Phil, would Elena have another twin?

What jobs do personifications do? Are they immediately conscripted to be a soldier, kind of Captain America? Captain America is a super soldier and also used for propaganda. Do they go in missions assigned to them by their presidents? I remember your Brunei and Phil post, that countries might be super spies by their governments. Is it really something like that? Are countries allowed to have other jobs? I remembered a post, I asked if personifications can have jobs. Emilio answered that he wanted to be a general, so he is not allowed to? He is the amang bayan after all, can he use his influence to get the job that he dreams of. Why can`t he be a general? I also heard your answer that being a personification means that you help people, how do they help people? Do they work in social services? Military? Education? Counseling? Psychology? NGO?

Can they have superpowers or are they as strong as an average person?

PLEASE ANSWER THIS, EVEN IF IT TAKES TIME. I CAN WAIT. You don`t have to make a drawing for it. Just type or draw if you like, I just really need to know. What if you randomly gave the characters abilities out of thin air? That would be really confusing. You might risk yourself with plot holes. We would be left out with the information needed to know what their life is like. If they have more detail what is their job exactly, then I would feel like they are more relatable because they actually have a life of their own other than being a mascot.)

Not whine: Back to one of the general problems, random sadness. Emilio is the one with the most random sad posts, so he has that main problem. I don`t know about you but if you put it in real life. It would sound like whining (I`m sorry). What is whining? It is a negative connotation of complaint. Complain is to express grief, pain, or discontent. It is okay to show strong emotion possibly even required but it would be weird to hugot it a lot.

I already talked about the struggle part, not whining is the combo for struggle. Why? When someone suffers and they whine, suffer, whine, suffer, then more whining, then it would feel like handling an annoying baby. I know that they have pain but I would not respect them if they whine. They would be just like an average person to me, “That sucks, but the way you reacted made me not like you.”

Struggle makes the audience root out for the protagonist because it is natural human behavior to root out for the underdogs and struggle is what everyone goes through so it`s relatable. Not whining is what makes the protagonist respectable. Who has more virtue, a person that complains whenever there is something inconvenient vs someone who endures it instead?

A protagonist should be relatable hence, struggle, but they should also have something admirable because if they are so painstakingly average it is not any more interesting. We did not ask for reality to be displayed, we already live with that every day. What we want is to be entertained, learn, or feel something. A protagonist is someone we should admire, respect, and relate to.

In my opinion, Emilio in the Yandere!Adam event actually shows a bit of character and for the first time, I find myself surprised to actually care about a fictional character even if it is a little bit. What I am talking about, are the normal posts before that.

Be active: This is what makes an ordinary protagonist, entertaining. An active protagonist is a protagonist that shapes the plot while a passive protagonist is pushed by the plot. Why I believe that Emilio, isn`t an active protagonist, he is controlled by events. I have never seen an event that Emilio started because of his actions. For example, Yandere!Adam event, Yandere!Adam is the one that sets the events in motion, while Emilio just watches. I can understand since it is a Yandere!Adam event, it has to focus on Yandere!Adam. I just wish that there is an event of Emilio`s own doing.

(Out of topic: I feel like Emilio and Elena`s relationship isn`t that strong when I looked at the Yandere!Adam event. Letting your own twin die?! It affects me a little bit personally because I have a twin of my own. I would never imagine killing my own twin or letting that happen. According to research, boy-girl twins are even closer than same-sex twins, so they should be closer but they are not. Maybe it is because they were separated for so long, so that is why they aren`t that close.)

So in totality, I think Emilio needs a lot of work in his character.

IN SUMMARY:

-Please elaborate in his struggles

-Tone down the hugot

-Have an event focused on Emilio

-Add more to his backstory

-Tell us more about him

So that is all with Emilio. The other main characters like Elena, Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, Manila, Cebu, and Davao don`t get enough characterization. They feel like caricatures and stereotypes sometimes. I don`t get who they are supposed to be like. Cebu as INTJ really? As a fan and deep researcher of MBTI, it is hard to see why Cebu will be that. In a nutshell, my impression of them are:

Elena: Oh I`m going to help Emilio, get shipped with so many dudes, and do most of the country work.

Luzon: I`m Miss Serious who is kind of like Manila by design. I`m also the boss and hate insubordination.

Visayas: I`m the guy that has such a peaceful life and brown streak of hair. (Apparently, I also betrayed my countrymen by siding with Spain.)

Mindanao: ….

Manila: I hate probinsyanos! Especially Cebu. I`m swimming in the trash and I have problems…with Cavite. #ampalaya #lifesucks #dacapital

Cebu: I hate Manila! (Hehe I speak Bisaya so he can`t understand) I also don`t get along with Iloilo.

Davao: Yay! (Anime hair).

(Out of topic: I get confused with the glasses on capitals. You said that it was a sign of progress and you put the capitals of other nations with it. It feels quite the opposite. People need glasses to see, so when someone becomes a capital do they become visually impaired? Or they don`t really need it. Does that mean that glasses on capitals are like crowns on royalty? It gets quite confusing to theorize over simple stuff like that. It seems to be too much of a coincidence.)

I`ll talk more about character design later which involves the main characters.

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While writing this, I realized that foreign personifications were more developed than the main characters. They show more personality in a page than Emilio or Elena can show in 10 pages. For Adam, I thought his character design immediately gave me the vibes of someone who would be America. He tries to keep his reputation so he hides his brown eye with contacts and he hides issues to show that he is strong. When it came to struggling, I feel like that is implied. He seems admirable at some aspect and he sets the story forward as a colonizer.

His character design also gives an implication of his character. He has blonde hair and blue eyes (something that is associated with America), he has a blue business suit, red tie, and white underneath. That is the colors of the American flag! Colors like that are usually associated with heroes. I immediately saw a developed character in him. I wonder why that can`t be the same for Emilio or Elena.

Emilio`s outfit is a Filipino barong, he has sun-kissed brown hair, tan skin, and really, really light brown eyes. He is basically brown all the way through. While Elena has similar eyes, black hair, and light tan skin. Their outfits are traditional Filipino clothing. Luzon has a yellow tie and female business suit. Visayas has a red shirt and brown pants. Mindanao has a white robe with blue highlights. It seems like the island groups are wearing the colors of the Philippine flag.

Their character designs are okay enough. It could possibly do better but it`s okay. When I mean to do better, I think you should modify it a little bit so it can look better. Like add detail to the clothes, use a different shade of color perhaps (the current colors aren`t bad on its own but I think it is best to experiment), and I think that is basically it. I get that you gave them really unusual eyes, to give them an anime feel (Personally I don`t like it, but I would not criticize that. It is your own personal aesthetic decision.). Maybe give Emilio and Elena an alternate casual outfit, the traditional clothing makes them seem like they can`t move on from the past (unless that is what you are going for).

The provinces are what I have a problem with. I can see that you tried, but some of them need work. They look unique but not unique enough. Sorry but, I think they look like branded food from the grocery sometimes. The Mindanaoan personifications are the most unique, Visayan personifications vary in quality but mostly unique, and the Luzones personifications have the most problems. I think you should do a bit more work in Ilocos Region, Cagayan Region, Central Luzon, CALABARZON, MIMAROPA, a bit in Western Visayas, and Zamboanga Peninsula.

Ilocos Region:

Pangasinan. Despite being part of Ilocos Region, he isn`t exactly Ilocano. He is Pangasinense. That means he has a different ethnicity than the rest of his fellow region mates. His economy and some of the way he acts is a bit different from the Ilocos. In all means, he is different from the other members. So he should look a little bit different. His fashion sense isn`t that good either. Come on! That collar shirt looks too long and does nothing to improve the figure. The hair is all levels baduy.

Ilocos Twins. They seem too similar to each other. It seems like the only difference is how they tuck their shirts and belts, and that Ilocos Norte is wearing a fake mustache. The minuscule detail is that Ilocos Norte has his pants tucked in more neatly while Ilocos Sur has slightly loose pants. You can differentiate them a bit unless you like it that way.

In general, they are kind of plain. It would be best to add more variety and fashion sense. (Unless you intended it that way)

Cagayan Region, Zamboanga Peninsula, MIMAROPA, and Western Visayas:

Make them a bit more varied.

Central Luzon:

Pampanga. My DEAR province would never wear something like that! It`s like he didn`t move on from the past. Bro, it is the modern days not revolution. Besides, Pampanga would wear a uniform during that period of time. In reality, Kapampangans like to dress well to the point it is a stereotype. Whenever there is an event or casual life, we always like to dress up. I think it would be best if he has a more fashionable outfit or you add something to the outfit to make it more fashionable. The most fashionable ones always seem to be the Metro Manilenos. It would be good if there are provinces that are really, really fashionable. Fashion is a really big deal.

What feeling are you trying to invoke when you made him?

Bulacan. Really baduy. This outfit is something I imagined to be in a cheap fantasy project. The upturned collar according to historical events was a trend because it was “preppy”, so okay then I guess since it indicates character. The shirt is really plain and does not catch the eye. It feels like it was cheaply done. The color of mint green or light green used for the shirt does not add to his character. Light green is used to indicate the more positive aspects of green like growth or healing. Quite ironic, since his eyes were turned grey due to fireworks.

The outfit is even worse than Pampanga`s, at least Pampanga`s outfit is something that someone would wear but that is something I don`t see in a traditional outfit or normal clothes.

Others. Bataan`s outfit is also baduy as well as Nueva Ecija. Why do the girls always have to wear traditional clothing? What is Zambales ordinary outfit? He does not dive all day, you know.

CALABARZON:

I have fewer problems with these guys but...does Cavite have to always wear the uniform. I`ve seen him in a different outfit before. I wonder what his signature normal outfit would look like. Laguna wearing a baro`t saya…a classic for Planet Puto women. What does Quezon have that is different from QC? They are pretty similar.

GENERAL CHARACTER DESIGN

Character design is of utmost importance because it can determine first impressions and show personality. What I`m looking for in character design is Personality, Color Scheme, and Symbolism. Personality is displayed by the little details like a business suit to indicate the character`s work-like personality or a suspenders to indicate a person`s old-fashioned/gangsta/a cop/compliments the figure of a muscular body. Colors have multiple symbolisms, blue can indicate dependability but can also give a depressing feeling. Light blue has more positive connotations but dark blue indicates the darker aspects. Little things like the wear the clothes are worn can indicate if someone is a slob or a neat person. Clothing can also indicate the standard of living, fashion style, personal preferences, and attitude. After all, you are what you wear.

Of course, character design is not just clothing it could also be a hairstyle, how the body is built, and stuff like gesture can add a push of characterization. Do they wear their hair in a neat manner or they have long hair? Things like that can indicate the beliefs of the person or attitude. Are they muscular? It might indicate that they workout, part of the military, or some physically demanding work. Are they thin? It could indicate that they don`t eat much, but why? See, that adds more character.

IN SUMMARY:

-BE FASHIONABLE (unless it is part of their character not to)

-MAKE THEM STAND OUT

-ASK “Why would they wear this?”

-COLOR IS IMPORTANT (research their meanings)

-COLOR SCHEME IS ALSO IMPORTANT (make it still look good, unless it is part of the character to clash)

Optional:

-Give each character a signature color that fits their personality

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Thank you for listening to my character design and characterization criticism. The lore is really difficult to get into. The only lore I can theorize perhaps is the Yandere!Adam with his eyes. That is basically it. I want to know where personifications come from, how immortal are they, and their origins. How was Emilio made? Did he have parents? Or he just appeared into existence? How are Elena and Emilio twins? How are they related to Mindanao, Visayas, and Luzon? You know, questions like that.

I`m sorry if I was offensive or anything. I really mean the best.”

#planetputo emildaphilz criticism tips

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kamiyu910 · 7 years ago

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"everything not black or tan as demonic" have you...have you ever watched American TV, movies, or ads? Have you not seen the white actors playing at least 75% of roles? Have you not seen decades of PoC being cast as thugs or magically wise non-characters? Have you not seen reality TV capitalizing on the most stereotypical "black behavior" they can find, editing it to look more extreme when necessary? What reality do you live in

I’m not really sure what post you’re referencing, but…

“at least 75% of roles”

Well looks like they’re under represented then, since white people, including white Hispanics, make up around 79% of the population in the US. (it’s more if you go by Tumblr definitions of white…). If you go by actual stats, black people are over represented based on percentage by population, but Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans are very under represented. If you go by the UK, I believe their white population is over 80%.

Have you noticed that Germans are portrayed as evil villains? Irish are typically low lifes in the mob scene along with the Italians. Don’t get me started on Russians or Greeks. What about people who have really curly hair, freckles, wear glasses? Typically portrayed as the geeky nerd who is good at homework and is forced to change their appearance (like straighten their hair, get contacts, wear makeup).

Over 90% of the population looks nothing like that Hollywood look, and Hollywood bases everything on stereotypes. Hot blond chick is usually a stupid spoiled brat type, jocks are constantly stereotyped, everything is a stereotype in the majority of things put out. Most things put out are trash.

Back around the 1980′s, I believe it was, this strange idea started infiltrating the black community that doing anything that could be considered white was bad. These days, we hear “education is for white people” all the time being told to these intelligent kids who want to learn. They get picked on for wanting to be taught, or for liking music that isn’t “black” enough. It’s considered bad to be well spoken, even. I watched my friend get ridiculed by his own sister for not speaking “ghetto.” She said he sounded too “white.” He also got picked on for liking poetry.

That is a mindset that yeah, Hollywood kinda has, and it’s hard to say whether or not it’s a product of Hollywood, or that Hollywood is just reacting to it (I think we can make a case for the hip hop, gangster rap culture being a big part of it). There used to be great shows, like Fresh Prince, Family Matters, Big Al, stuff like that, things that encouraged kids to learn and grow and avoid the street life. I don’t know what happened.

I try very hard to avoid TV these days. I went to college and studied the entertainment industry. I wanted a job in it… but it’s trash. Reality TV is utter tripe. Most of those shows are scripted, even if they pretend not to be. There isn’t anything good and wholesome on. It’s just drama and the more drama the better ratings, it seems. Every show I liked was canceled so I just watch the old stuff like Star Trek, Stargate, Beauty and the Beast (1987), etc. Where people were treated like people, like individuals with their own personalities and not just copy pasted pandering bullshit. Where they had faults and didn’t have to be perfect to be loved.

Movies are recycled garbage. Hollywood has lost its originality. Shape of Water is just Splash. They even brought out Ben Hur again, and it flopped. I hope Hollywood dies. I frankly hate it. It’s full of nepotism, corruption, and greed, with some good people still trying to do right, but that’s hard. Everything is pandering to a very specific crowd, which happens to be a minority, a very privileged minority no less, and they sit in their fancy mansions patting themselves on the back for pretending they’re putting “representation” out there when all their doing is shitting on people.

It’s also very in vogue to shit on white people. I haven’t seen so much racist bullshit in years, and it’s being called “progressive” and shit, like No, my parents fought against this shit, and now y’all are bringing it back like it’s perfectly fine? People are supporting segregation again, so long as it’s white people being excluded. I have a folder that’s full of anti-white headlines where if you change out “white” or “male” for something like Jew, it sounds like nazi propaganda. They’re changing real historical people’s races just to fill a quota, as if that’s somehow cool, instead of showcasing real non-white people who fought against the odds and made something of themselves in history. There are tons of people they could be focusing on, but instead they’d rather erase white people.

They claim they fight for non-white people, but they don’t. They claim to try to make all their precious characters perfect (because if someone ain’t perfect, there’s a shit storm that follows! Oh no, a Valkyrie was portrayed as a raging alcoholic? Heaven forbid!). There is so much hypocrisy, I’m just fucking sick of all of it. I’m sick of people claiming bad stereotypes are good so long as the people are a certain skin color/race. I’m tired of people claiming it’s ok to demonize a certain race, while you can’t even criticize others without a blacklash, I’m tired of the inequality.

People should treat everyone the same. That’s the world I grew up being told I’d get to live in, and seeing it on TV with everyone treating everyone else like just one of the family, not caring about skin color. I watched shows and read books that had great strong female characters, though the only people who were really ever like me weren’t like me in looks, just the way they acted, their personality… (like Data from Star Trek… sigh). The one show I really related to, the main character was a white male, and they utterly ripped my heart out and stomped on it with how they ended it, and with Michael Clarke Duncan dying shortly after… (the Finder).

I hate TV. I hate Hollywood. I hate the media and the news. I hope it all burns to the ground and gets replaced by something actually worthwhile. All those privileged untalented fucks shitting out garbage need to go to make room for people who have great story ideas and actually well written characters. Get rid of the shitheads who think they can just dump out some poorly written character and get kudos because oh noes, the character is some sort of minority! Like the fucking Ghostbusters 2016 that they tried to shove down my throat as if it wasn’t a horrible disgrace to all the strong female characters of the past. They can fuck right off.

#anonynous #anon #I have a fever #I'm tired #I don't give a shit #Hollywood #Hollywood is a dung hill #pile of shit #fuck off right to hell #diversity is a scam these days #it's just cheaply shat out bullshit

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theliterateape · 3 years ago

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Commie Puke-Faced Panty-Waisted Girly Man

by Don Hall

New comment from Ed Parker on They Learned it from the Wolverines:

It's hard to believe that one author can be so twisted, so wrong, and so proud of it in one article. "Soyboy" doesn't describe him well enough. Don Hall is what GenXers would call a MANGINA. But we Boomers used to call guys like this Commie Puke-Faced Panty-Waisted Girly Men. I suppose it would be pointless to argue that the frame-up on Kavanaugh had nothing to do with any reality outside of Whoopi Goldberg's psychosis, or that the obvious fraud of the recent election was nothing more than the installation of a Chinese puppet by a Chinese-owned Congress, or even that the remake of Red Dawn was censored by the Chinese, as it originally portrayed them as the invaders. Facts don't matter to thong-wearing pajama boys. As a spew, this article was a decent attempt to be obnoxious without being factual, but Donny's efforts were all in vain anyway, as his target audience doesn't read, can't think, and functions primarily on "feewings" manipulated so well in his Public Fool System edumakayshun. I'm sure he's very proud of himself, as any hocker that manages to crawl all the way up the side of a toilet bowl would be, but the intelligent reading public will just flush him down the swirly of irrelevance from whence he came, and where he should have stayed. All you've got is snark, Donny boy, and you're not even very good at that.

Dear Ed—

We at LiterateApe.com don't get too many comments on our articles despite our impressive (at least to us) average 98K unique reads per year, so yours stood out. It also stood out because, in terms of kind of brilliant takedowns, yours is quite the feat.

In 236 words, you manage to include some excellent Trumpian putdowns (soyboy, MANGINA, thong-wearing pajama boy, hocker that manages to crawl all the way up the side of a toilet bowl, and the classic Commie Puke-Faced Panty-Waisted Girly Man), you also adhere to some fantastic (but erroneous) GOP talking points like a champ! "Kavanaugh was framed." "Biden is an illegitimate president because Trump really won." "The Chinese are defrauding our elections (as opposed to the Russians)."

All unleashed due to my observation that guys like you have been pining away for your "Wolverine" moment since we all were in high school, desperately clinging to the possibility that we, too, could avenge Harry Dean Stanton while looking like a teen heartthrob.

I could simply ignore your comment. I could answer it in the comments section. But, no, Ed. You deserve better. You deserve more.

Throughout history, humans have not handled new technologies well. Gutenberg's printing press has been implicated in the Reformation, the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, all of which had profound effects on their eras. The shift from an earth-centered to a sun-centered universe were unintended consequences in the printing press era. This influx of books, pamphlets, and ideas destroyed the existing paradigm and those in power at the time did not respond well. Excommunications, torture, executions followed the spread of information previously gated from the rabble.

436 years later, Bell received his patent for the telephone. Give or take fifty years or so and a large percentage of American households contained a phone. All of a sudden, when tempers flared and your neighbor needed to be insulted or wrangled, you no longer had to leave your home, walk to his house, and confront him face-to-face. Now, sans the brief time to diffuse the rage, you could pick up the phone, call him, and tell him what a MANGINA he was in an instant.

In the onslaught of the Information Age, we now have the internet. No longer even required to know the neighbor you get to insult, everyone is a neighbor by proximity to a computer screen and some broadband. Instantaneous outrage, immediate written bitchslapping.

This, like the fallout from every invention of new technology in communication indicates, is not the end of all things. It is us getting used to new ways to engage and, because we are humans, fucking it up for a while until the newness wears out.

In the nascent days of digital communication, I found some fun in trolling some people. I recall creating a fake character—Kaufman—and trolling the Chicago Improv Message Board. It was pointless, it was antagonistic, it was a series of namecalling and juvenile bullshit. On the other hand, I was in my twenties and, like all people in their twenties, a bit stupid.

I am, however, curious about grown people who continue to engage with online communication in the same manner.

Specific to your comment, Ed, I can say that the insults are like throwing a basketball at an armless kid. Just bounces off and I stare at you wondering what else you have for me. I've been called a Nazi and a racist by some on the Extreme Left ("The Woke") and that doesn't bother me because it isn't any different than calling me a Unicorn or a Bowl of Potatoes. I'm obviously not those things so why would it bother me?

I can't speak for being a "soyboy" as I'm not entirely certain what that means but I can say I dig meat. Not sure what a MANGINA is but I applaud the creation of the word. I might very well be a MANGINA.

I'm definitely not a Commie. I'm no more in favor of the "Oppressor/Oppressed" binary of Marxist thought than I am a racist. Binary is too simplistic in my opinion. I may be Puke-Faced (subjective), I wear boxer shorts so no panty-waist, and I'm thinking that you see "Girly Man" as a derogatory but I see it as being feminist (which I am).

Still, pretty creative stuff and you managed to evoke "libtard" without using it so my hat goes off to you.

You, by your choices of real info, present yourself as a member of the Alt-Right Tribe and so your insults are pointless and juvenile (like mine were when I was a 22-year old "Kaufman").

The meat of your comment centers on three issues we can disagree about but could use a bit of genuine conversation.

I understand how someone would see the Kavanaugh accusations as merely a "He Said/She Said" situation. The Whoopi Goldberg thing misses me but I can see how someone might disagree that Brett is a rapist. While I don't believe all women in these cases, I believe these women so we'll just have to leave it at that.

As for your contention that the presidential election was fraudulent ("that the obvious fraud of the recent election was nothing more than the installation of a Chinese puppet by a Chinese-owned Congress"), man, there's so much actual data available that disputes everything in that excerpt it's hard to take you seriously. You seem to be a True Believer and I've found that talking to you and your type is more like beating my forehead up against a building or giant rock than dialogue.

Keep in mind, the fact that your comment sort proves the point of my article doesn't mean I dismiss you entirely. I have friends and family who believe in the concept of Christianity and I don't relegate them to idiot status due to the fairy tale to which they ascribe.

As for the remake of Red Dawn I have no opinion on it either way so you may very well be correct that it was censored by the Chinese government. They tend to do that on the regular with Western film so it would not be a big surprise.

My curiosity comes back to why you would feel it necessary or worth your valuable time to write those 236 words?

I suppose one could also ask what pragmatic purpose I had in writing the article in question and my response would be for entertainment purposes in general. I found the idea of men my age being slowly indoctrinated by the pop culture of our youth fascinating. I remembered that the Milius version of Red Dawn was in line with the "Trust the Military/Distrust the Government" propaganda of the Reagan years. In terms of pragmatics, I suppose I thought this was interesting enough to pen and publish. I could be wrong.

What pragmatic purpose would you, Ed, say justifies your response in writing? You don't know me. I don't know you. You decided that the article was so enraging that you needed to respond, not on your own social platforms, but on mine so there must be a reason other than sheer spite?

The landscape of our current version of the same culture wars we Americans have been fighting since the founding of the country aren't that different from the days of incendiary pamphlets distributed by Patrick Henry. The difference, I think, comes into play in the immediacy of response (which eliminates the time to calm your "feewings" and focus your thoughts) and the vast reach the internet provides.

I can't make too many assumptions about you, Ed. I could assume that working IT at Sears for years (which, these days resembles working at a Blockbuster Video as a tech support guy) left you feeling cheated by life. I could assume you sat there in your Sears polo shirt imagining the coming Red Dawn and how you could be a Wolverine yourself—fighting for the freedoms of "real Americans" against the Commie Puke-Faced Panty Waisted Girly Men. I could assume your sad existence led you to open your own firearms school and wear t-shirts that declare your fealty to "Beer & Guns & Bacon & Freedom".

I could but I won't.

I find that kind of assuming makes an ass out of you. You might be a great guy. Or not. I can guarantee you are far more than your online vitriol. Most people are more than what we can see on the surface.

Ask yourself, Ed—why? Why even bother when you know how meaningless and empty your screed will be? Is it a sort of bragging for your friends to see and applaud? “You sure told that pussy what’s what, Ed!”

Is this the person you hoped you’d be when you became the age you’re at now? If not, what went wrong and is it too late to change course?

#comments #Wolverine #MANGINA

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the-record-newspaper · 7 years ago

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Surviving the Holocaust

Show above are Dr. Rick Laws, Dr. Zohara Boyd, and Dr. Peter Petschauer

By Heather Dean

Record Reporter

April 12th is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Dr. Zohara Boyd is a childhood survivor of the Nazi occupation in Poland. She was born on April 17th 1942 in Piotrkov Trybunalaki, Poland. That same night the Gestapo in Warsaw rounded up several Jewish leaders in the Ghetto community under false pretenses of a meeting and slaughtered them all. This is commonly referred to as Black Friday or Bloody Friday in history. Three months later her father was able to smuggle her, her mother, and her mother sister out of the Ghetto. Dr. Boyd is retired English Professor from Appalachian State University. I had the privilege of listening to her speak at Dr. Rick laws GPS class at Ashe Campus. Also speaking was Dr. Peter Petschaur, the son of a Nazi journalist stationed in Italy. He is a retired history Professor from Appalachian State University. Together they were able to present both sides of the Holocaust and why it is so important that history not repeat itself. Dr. Boyd said “We are called children of the Holocaust. It may be hard to imagine that the old people you see at the front of the room were once children. Know that we don't do this for pleasure. Usually Peter and I go home shaken and unhappy after one of these seminars. It takes us awhile to get our brains and our emotions reorganized after we've done one of these." In her opening she offered two polarities, as she held the movie called “Trust Me” in one hand and the magazine Hate and Extremism in 2017 in the other. The movie was based off of a 2003 experiment in West Jefferson, NC, a boys camp to build goodwill among groups that don't usually have any contact, specifically Jews, Christian, and Muslim children. She said that after one week these children had accomplished more than politicians had in years as far as building goodwill, and that it was a noble attempt. The magazine is published by Southern Poverty Law Center and keeps tabs on all the hate groups in the US. She went on to say that these two things are being offered every day, trust or hate, and in recent years she has watched the scale tipping more toward hate and extremism. She showed a picture of her fathers family in 1938 one year before the war. It was the day before his younger sister's wedding. The picture included his other sister and her husband, his mother, his 10 year old niece & the groom's parents. There were X’s marked across many of those in the picture. His future brother-in-law was already Living in America, and right after the wedding his sister moved to America with him. Boyd then went on to explain that of the nine people in that picture that stayed in Poland, only her father survived. Boyd's grandmother and her ten-year-old cousin, were taken to the town Synagogue and shot by Gestapo. The others all died in concentration camps. Boyd's father was a judge before the war, and even after he was put in the Ghetto he was able to stay in touch with some of his professional contacts. Through schemes and plots he was able to smuggle false birth and baptismal certificates for he, his wife, his daughter (Boyd) and his wife's youngest sister. "Just how he got out of the ghetto, I don't know, but that's how he managed to save us." Boyd said. She then showed the real certificates and the fake ones. "My father's contacts were able to find a Catholic Family with the same last name as ours, close to the same age, that had also just given birth to a child within weeks of me. I don't know a lot about how he got out, because my parents never really spoke about it. Many people who have lived through the wars don't usually talk a lot about it once it's over. It's just not something people want to relive." Boyd said. Her father’s keen eye in noticing the numbers on the transport trucks that were supposedly taking people to the East to work, were coming back too soon to pick up more "workers", and that tipped him off to the fact that something was not quite right. It was then he started preparing for his family's escape from the Ghetto. Of the escape, she said it probably helped that her father had blonde hair and blue eyes with very Scandinavian features. Her mother’s sister also had these features. Her mother had dark hair but it was straight, and she had very Slavic features. "The only person in the mix that could give the show away was me" Boyd continued "it was very foolish of them to attempt to take a three month old child. Babies cry, they make messes, and it's harder to find a hiding place. Especially a baby with black curly hair, both dominant traits of Jews- I was not something that was going to keep a "Christian Aryan" family safe during the war." She then showed her naturalization certificate from 1959 when she was 16 years old, to show us how non-Aryan she looked. Her father cleverly took them to Warsaw. He had attended the University of Warsaw, as did her mother, which was quite unusual for a woman at that time. Her father had studied law, her mother had setting teaching. They both knew the city, and they posed as a Catholic Family that had been bombed out of their home.

The reason it was clever she said, was because her parents went to a place that they already knew. Most people escaping the Nazi’s wanted to be in faraway secluded places. The only trouble was that people were usually wary of strangers, especially urban strangers, and the area was quite anti-Semitic at the time. She noted that sometimes what seems like safety was really a death trap for people.

Her family managed to rent places in Warsaw from those sympathetic to another "Catholic" Family who had been bombed out of their home, as many of them had family that was either serving in the war or had died in the war already. "They were genuinely nice people" Boyd said "but as Catholics they kept inviting us to church with them, which was a problem since we didn't know the Rosary. Not to mention "the hour of our death" could have been at any moment for us; fortunately there was an old grandmother who taught me the Rosary. To this day if someone were to wake me in the middle of the night I would probably wake up crossing myself without thinking. But we had to keep moving because people got suspicious of us. It's a Jewish custom to wash our hands before we pray. So we got funny looks when we walked into church and washed our hands in the Holy Water."

As the Allies approached, Warsaw was reduced to Rubble. They moved from one cellar to another, sometimes from a literal burning building in hopes they might make it another day. Then one day, the bombing stopped. The Russian soldiers came in and they were finally safe. Things began to get better but only for a short while.

At this time she turned the discussion over to Dr. Peter Petschaur.

Born in 1939 in Berlin, Germany, he grew up in Blois, Italy. "My father grew up as a German speaking in Slovenia, Yugoslavia. He was getting his PhD in journalism in 1934, when he bought into a philosophically enthusiastically. That philosophy was that all German-speaking people should return to Germany and become a “People's Community”, and my father was ready to join. This of course was the beginning of the Nazi party. And as we all know, journalism is never a good profession to be in when there is an authoritarian in power, because all you do spread the propaganda of those in charge. We see that even today."

In 1938 the senior Petschaur got a job as office staff for Heinrich Himmler himself. It was soon discovered he had a particular language skill that would become very useful. He could speak a specific dialect of those in the northern mountains of Italy. So he was transferred to a small town called Brixen, to persuade the German-speaking peoples to leave the area. In this community the SS didn't show their fangs, it looked more like a Diplomatic Mission. They would have grand celebrations at the train station for the people choosing to go back to Germany with lots of pomp and circumstance to persuade people to go back to the Homeland.

In 1942, at the age of 13, Petschaur’s father took him to Nuremberg to show him all the Nazi monuments that were still standing at the time. "I was 13 and clueless about what he was talking about. He was saying what happened here and what happened there, looking back his side of the war memories were much different than those of others I have come across" he said. His father had been tried in 1948 as part of the Nuremberg trials, and he had spent time in 13 American prison camps. He was not found guilty to any specific war crimes, but was found to be a fellow traveler in the Nazi organization. He paid his fines and was free to go. His mother I divorced his father while he was in prison.

As an adult Petschaur moved to New York City. It was not until his father was older, that he started having a different recollection of his part in the war. A letter from March of 1967 said in part "There was a time in my life in which I was full of enthusiasm and that was the time of the "peoples community." Later I realized that it was not a community at all, but rather one characterized by fear, hate, Envy, the seven deadly sins and continued abuse of all other demonic laws."

"Slowly, slowly, I'm resolving myself to my father's path with the writing of my book, and hopefully moving on, better than I did before." Petschaur said.

This story will continue next week.

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fae-fucker · 7 years ago

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Shatter Me: Chapter 10-11

Chapter 10

Last time we were in this heck hole of a book, Adam had been revealed to be a soldier and we were introduced to Warner Bros., the resident sexy bad boy who has offered Juliette a job as his personal weapon.

Adam leads Juliette through some hallways and she’s like totally hot for him still.

I feel him shift in the darkness and soon his body is too close so disarmingly close to mine. His hand is on my lower back and he’s guiding me through the corridors toward an unknown destination. Every inch of my skin is blushing. I have to hold myself upright to keep from falling backward into his arms.

“I’m 100% convinced this man wants to kill me but hotdamn I’d still tap that.”

I can’t even start explaining how much sense this all just makes, you know?

I’m painfully excited but I haven’t felt natural light on my skin in so long I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle it.

This is why people hate first person narration. Fucking look at this garbage.

The air hits me first.

It’s my phantom fist.

Juliette is in awe of all the outside that she’s feeling right now before Adam stuffs her into a tank. A TANK. She also mentions soldiers looking at them and I have to wonder what kind of facility this actually is.

They drive off and Juliette angsts about how shitty everything is and how the world is dead. We also get more information -- if you can call it that -- about how the Reestablishment came into power and became the Establishment, if you will.

I remember there were rules. No more dangerous imaginations, no more prescription medications. A new generation comprised of only healthy individuals would sustain us. The sick must be locked away. The old must be discarded. The troubled must be given up to the asylums. Only the strong should survive.

Ok, so this sounds like good ole fascism right there, so this could theoretically be a thing (because it kind of is right now). It’s got that proper us-vs-them mentality that’s at the core of most authoritarian governments. But then Tahereh gets greedy:

No more stupid languages and stupid stories and stupid paintings placed above stupid mantels. No more Christmas, no more Hanukkah, no more Ramadan and Diwali. No talk of religion, of belief, of personal convictions. Personal convictions were what nearly killed us all, is what they said.

This is just dumb. People in power often use religion to justify their toxic views, and I’m having a hard time seeing humanity (which has gone to war over religion over and over again) giving up all of their religions just because some dingdongs claimed it would help.

Now, I’m not shitting on religious people here, I’m just stating the facts that I do not see humanity accepting this new hardcore atheist government that says that being a person with beliefs and convictions is bad.

Usually dictatorships and authoritarian governments are based on an us-vs-them mentality. The people in power pick a target that they label as “other” and create propaganda to “unite” the people against a common “threat”. “Our” group is presented as strong, righteous, and good to reinforce the love for their own group while strengthening the hate for the “other”.

Forcing the population to war against ... itself? Convincing a population that they’re all terrible to the point where they’ll all just go “yeah I guess we are, please control us”? I don’t see it. Many YA dystopias are based on this idea and I honestly don’t see how this could ever work.

A potential leader telling you that you’re the best, better than that guy over there, let’s go kill him? That clearly works on a population. A potential leader telling you that you suck and that you should give them the power over you so they can fix you? That’s suspicious as fuck. This sounds more like a cult than a government, and sure, cult tactics do work, but cults target very specific individuals that they slowly groom into accepting their views, and they’re often small as a result of this and the fact that they isolate their members from society. Doing this to a whole population? Nah.

I think this kind of is a side-effect of YA authors being afraid of taking a side? You don’t wanna write about a nasty white dude taking power and making everyone believe that everyone other than a white dude is a piece of dirt because that might upset the white dudes, so you just kind of write governments that are weirdly diverse but are “evil” because they hate ... humanity in general? And we’re all humans, so clearly we’ll think they’re evil! Easy!

This is also why YA dystopias often create worlds that are super hardcore and oppressive, but conveniently never racist or misogynistic or homophobic, so they’re somehow more advanced than we are when it comes to equality but also more barbaric. *insert I’m not [thing], I hate everyone equally joke here*

And I get it. Writing about real-life oppression mirrored in a fake world is hard and icky and uncomfortable. But if you’ve set out to write a proper dystopia and you end up with this, you do kind of cheapen it all by making your dark-haired white girl oppressed because of her cool superpower/rebel spirit while the government is made up of a diverse cast of bad guys who are all bad because the narrative said so.

I think I went off on a tangent. What I’m trying to say is: people take elements from 1984 even though the parts they take from it don’t make any dingdang sense in the context of their worlds.

Anyway, Juliette tells us that there is, in fact, an underground rebel movement that’s waiting for the right moment to strike. I don’t know how she knows that and I don’t know why they’re waiting, but whatever.

We pull up to a structure 10 times larger than the asylum and suspiciously central to civilization. From the outside it looks like a bland building, inconspicuous in every way but its size, gray steel slabs comprising 4 flat walls, windows cracked and slammed into the 15 stories. It’s bleak and bears no marking, no insignia, no proof of its true identity.

Political headquarters camouflaged among the masses.

How bad is this camouflage that Juliette, who presumably has never been inside, is able to figure out what it is? I can’t accept the idea that she’s supposed to be super insightful, for obvious reasons.

Chapter 11

Dirty money is dripping from the walls, a year’s supply of food wasted on marble floors, hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical aid poured into fancy furniture and Persian rugs. I feel the artificial heat pouring in through air vents and think of children screaming for clean water. I squint through crystal chandeliers and hear mothers begging for mercy. I see a superficial world existing in the midst of a terrorizing reality and I can’t move.

[...]

They filled our world with weapons aimed at our foreheads and smiled as they shot 16 candles right through our future. They killed those strong enough to fight back and locked up the freaks who failed to live up to their utopian expectations.

Ok so um. I see the point you’re trying to make here and I agree that rich people are the devil and that we should eat them, but in this world that you’ve created, this kind of makes no sense.

How ... How exactly are they “stealing” or “wasting” money if they’re in charge of the economy and the production of everything? Who exactly are they stealing from if they’ve murdered most of the population anyway? Are they paying people to have those Persian rugs made? Isn’t it more logical to assume they’ve just taken stuff that has already existed, since nobody else was using it?

Like, you have real-life examples of how politicians and corporations get rich, and this ... this isn’t one of those ways. You don’t blast a population to death and then start producing wealth out of nowhere. New wealth doesn’t just magically appear once you’ve stolen “everything” from the population.

You know for someone who was complaining about how evil the eestablishment are for taking away art and fancy things, she sure doesn’t want any of this art or fancy things. The Reestablishment was also established (hueh) to promote a “simple” lifestyle, and yeah, usually dictatorships do that to the population while they live like kings, but Juliette hasn’t noted this hypocrisy yet, she’s just cringing at the fancy things so far.

Let’s hope she does.

Whatever. Juliette is all disgusted with the luxury around her and sees blood all over (See because she thinks people have been sacrificed to Big Corporate for all this fancy stuff. It’s poetic you see because poor people have uuuuh died for all this stuff and all that.), so much so that she has a breakdown.

I’m in the air. I’m a bag of feathers in [Adam’s] arms and he’s breaking through soldiers crowding around for a glimpse of the commotion and for a moment I don’t want to care that I shouldn’t want this so much. I want to forget that I’m supposed to hate him, that he betrayed me, that he’s working for the same people who are trying to destroy the very little that’s left of humanity and my face is buried in the soft material of his shirt and my cheek is pressed against his chest and he smells like strength and courage and the world drowning in rain. I don’t want him to ever ever ever ever let go of my body. I wish I could touch his skin, I wish there were no barriers between us.

Ok so first you get all upset over how these guys are evil for having all this stuff, and the next second you’re creaming yourself about how you totally wanna bang this dude you don’t know and who you’re convinced wants to kill or otherwise hurt you?

Makes that whole previous freakout seem a bit cheap now, dontcha think?

Juliette begs Adam to kill her because she just can’t handle how horny she is for him how rich and evil these people are, but he’s like naw dawg, can’t kill the protagonist in a trilogy this early.

Adam takes her to a room and Juliette complains about how pretty and luxurious it is.

Listen. I don’t care how strong her ess-joo spirit is. Girl has been locked up in a cell all alone for 200+ days. Justice for the poor should be at the very back of her head, not her main concern. She should be shitting herself with joy right now.

“Please don’t let go of me put me down,” I tell him.

Tahereh ... sweetie. You can’t do this in dialogue. That’s not ... that’s not how anything works. Did she actually say this and then quickly correct herself? I should be enchanted by this riveting dialogue, not be taken out of the experience trying to figure out if this girl has two voices like she’s possessed by Pazuzu.

Juliette asks Adam to leave her alone, which he says isn’t an option, since Warner Bros. considers her a threat and has thus decided that Adam must watch her at all times. Which means he’ll be moving in.

Yikes. I know it’s all a (rather fanfiction-y) setup for their “romance”, but still, how creepy and uncomfortable is that?

I want to hate him and judge him and scream forever but I’m failing because all I see is an 8-year-old boy who doesn’t remember that he used to be the kindest person I ever knew.

Yeah, can’t wait until he’s suddenly written to be super evil so Warner Bros. can swoop in and save you.

And, really? “I know he’ll be invading my privacy for who knows how long and I’m pretty sure he wants me harm or at least wouldn’t mind inflicting it if ordered, but he was a nice kid back in school, so I can’t bring myself to hate him!” Great.

Adam tells her that she has to change into less icky clothes and says that there’s a bathroom.

I see a door connected to the room and I’m suddenly curious. I’ve heard stories about people with bathrooms in their bedrooms. I guess they’re not exactly in the bedroom, but they’re close enough.

1) This narration is completely OOC for Juliette, and also really dumb.

2) So we went from “fuck all this rich people crap!!” to “ooh, my own bathroom? sweet!!” Consistency who?

Adam says that there are no cameras in the bathroom, which means that there are cameras in the bedroom. Juliette is only mildly concerned with this.

Adam says that Warner Bros. will be expecting her for dinner, and then goes to show her how the stuff in the bathroom works.

He then acts a bit weird, looking around and putting his finger to his lips to tell her to be quiet, and Juliette assumes he’s about to rape her and wishes she could kill herself.

He of course isn’t and leaves when he realizes why she’s freaking out.

So uh. This suddenly got dark.

#eff reads: shatter me #book rants

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estimize · 8 years ago

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Revenge of the Humans: How Discretionary Managers Can Crush Systematics

This is the entirety of a three part series that was originally published byIntegrity Research and titled The Great Quant Makeover - Part 1: How Discretionary Managers Can Cope with the New Systematic Realities, Part 2:The Rise of the Quants and How Some Successful Discretionary Managers are Responding, Part 3: Revenge of the Humans or How Discretionary Managers Can Crush Systematics

Six months ago I found myself in our Estimize office sitting across the table from a hedge fund portfolio manager who said something I honestly couldn’t believe. According to this PM who runs a $500M long/short book at a large multi-manager fund, he was taking a data science course at night, after work. He told me, “if I don’t learn how to do quantitative analysis I’m not going to have a job in two years.”

A second said the same thing to me a week later.

Two weeks after that I received an email from the “school” providing that very course, inquiring if I could teach a data science class, specifically for finance, to 25 members of a hedge fund who had contracted them.

These are just a few anecdotes among many in the absolutely massive transformation taking place right now within the discretionary institutional management industry. Discretionary managers have woken up, and are now scrambling to understand what’s taking place and how they must change in relation to it. Many will not survive the shift. Others will take advantage and be better off for it.

This piece takes a deep dive into the following themes and how institutional managers can begin to effectively redirect themselves:

Investors have woken up to the asymmetric risk they were taking on with active discretionary mutual funds, hedge funds and RIAs who were basically playing with beta instead of generating alpha. Now they are pulling their money.

Asset flows are moving into “passive” ETF strategies and will continue to move further into smart beta ETF strategies, long only active management is headed to the grave.

Hedge fund assets are flowing out of discretionary and into quantitative systematic strategies which have produced far more consistent alpha. They also blow-up less often.

Most classic systematic alpha strategies are based on price; volume and fundamentals have been arbitraged out and are now betas. This has precipitated a race to build new alphas with new data sets.

Discretionary managers are scurrying to incorporate new data sets, but lack the understanding of how to analyze their efficacy and more importantly, how to incorporate them into their discretionary trading processes.

If discretionary managers remain disciplined and execute their rubric faithfully, they can crush systematic quants, but they must solve the religion vs. science question first.

The organizational structure of discretionary management teams along with the type of people they hire is broken and outdated for today’s challenges. Changes are starting to take place, but all too slowly for many players to survive.

Building the right infrastructure will remain pertinent to surviving this shift. Both quant and discretionary firms must hire teams that include engineers, product managers and quants to suss out new data sets.

On June 20th, Estimize will be hosting the L2Q (Learn to Quant) Conference, a one day seminar designed for discretionary institutional PMs, analysts, and traders who know they need to move quickly and efficiently towards building quantitative processes. Segments will be taught by preeminent buy side, sell side, and unique data experts with vast quantitative investment experience at Two Sigma, PDT Partners, WorldQuant, Wolfe Research, Deutsche Bank, and others.

But before that, let’s take a deeper dive into the topics above, and why we felt a whole conference was necessary to explore them.

1. Getting Paid For Playing With Beta Is Over

Looking back, it’s hard to understand why anyone was willing to give most discretionary fund managers money in the first place. The truth is, most PMs were simply playing with beta, whether it be momentum, mean reversion, value, growth, sector or market cap. Managers were leveraging these far more often than they were actually generating alpha. Now we can all argue over whether correctly timing the use of betas is in itself alpha, but that argument is made moot by the fact that the vast majority of PMs were unsuccessful at this in the long run and eventually blew up.

The greatest trick the industry ever pulled was making LPs believe that they could consistently leverage beta and not get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, giving up years of returns in a matter of months. Over and over, fund managers took their “two and twenty” to the bank in the years they happened to be on the right side of that equation. Then they blew up. Instead of fighting back to their hurdle, they just closed shop and opened up a new one, somehow convincing investors to play the same asymmetric game of risk once again. Heads I win, tails I take a vacation for a year and someone gives me another coin to flip later.

Don’t get me wrong, there are managers who have proven track records of not blowing up while playing with beta, and some even generate true alpha, but they are few and far between. Good luck picking the correct fund manager.

Why did it take the market so long to wake up? We can start with the great answers you’ll hear from friends of mine like wealth manager, Josh Brown. He fully understands the social and egotistical aspect of being invested in these funds, not because it’s the rational thing to do, but because of the accompanying prestige. The same can be said for managing your own personal portfolio; it’s something to talk about at a cocktail party. And while it seems our current political climate echoes the movie Idiocracy, financial market education and investor behavior have actually taken a huge leap forward since the ‘08 crash. I find it interesting that retail investors actually got smart before pension funds, pulling money from active managers, closing their brokerage accounts, and investing in passive low cost ETF strategies.

As for the tens of thousands of small RIAs, why would I give them my money either if I can buy a smart beta ETF for 20bps that does basically the same thing they were for 100bps? You’re gonna tell me that all those mom and pop RIAs managing $40M are executing those smart beta strategies as efficiently and accurately as iShares? Please. It’s only a matter of time before Betterment or some other robo-advisor allows its clients to algorithmically allocate a portion of their portfolio to these strategies. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them also provided the ability to use simple, proven, market timing overlays in order to rotate in and out or long and short certain smart beta strategies.

Hedge fund PMs have to realize that even though they are in last car on this disruption train, the conductor is coming to clip their ticket as well. They will either evolve or die, like any other industry disrupted by better efficiency. I think it’s obvious that there will be far fewer of them as most will not successfully shift to generating alpha.

2. All Investing Is Active, Even The Passive Kind

Let’s clear something up, there’s no such thing as “passive investing”. The words we use matter because they form the basis for how we think about things and the actions we take. The developed western world is ripping itself apart over an inability to win a “war on terrorism” because, for propaganda purposes, we decided to say we were fighting a war on a military tactic (you didn’t have to study war theory in school like me to know you can’t win a war against a tactic).

All investing is active, even the decision of how to weight an index, what goes into that index, and how to allocate your capital amongst different asset classes. Just because the computer keeps your allocation levels static does not mean you’ve abdicated responsibility for investment decisions. This is why I’m such a big fan of smart beta, because it does away with the ignorant notion that you can avoid making a decision on beta to begin with. We all have to, so we might as well make that decision in an informed and active way.

In any event, we’re going to continue to see massive flows of capital out of “active” long only mutual fund and long/short hedge fund strategies and into these. The question on everyone’s mind is, how will this affect the market? My best guess is that we’re not going to see the downside of massive systemic risks some are warning about when everyone is indexing. The latter part of 2016 and beginning of 2017 prove that even with all the indexed money, correlations can still drop quickly when macro factors evolve. After the 2016 election, cross-asset correlations that have existed for the past decade began to break down as pictured in the charts below.

Exhibit 1: Cross-asset correlations have fallen sharply

3. Assets Are Flowing From Discretionary to Systematic

You don’t have to look too deeply to see this massive trend in strategy allocations playing out. WorldQuant LLC, with its growing team of over 600 employees, including more than 120 PhDs and 275 researchers, has been managing systematic investment strategies for Millennium Management since 2007. At Point72 (SAC) we’ve seen Cubist outpace the discretionary side of the firm by a wide margin with now over 40 systematic PMs. Balyasny has quickly shifted focus and is building a stable of systematic managers to effectively do something with their huge AUM growth. Other multi-manager platforms like Schonfeld, Paloma, AHL, Engineer’s Gate and GSA have added significant assets. Paul Tudor Jones is attempting to remake his firm by hiring a bunch of systematic managers, and others are following suit. And let’s not even get started with the continued dominance of firms like Renaissance, AQR and Two Sigma, where you probably can’t even give them your money if you tried.

I would say that the nerds are the new kings of Wall Street (Midtown), but frankly they (myself included) would cringe at that statement given their propensity to run in very different circles than the rest of the money manager crowd. This group is mostly made up of unassuming nerdy PhD types that you would probably take for accountants on the subway. They have serious mathematical and scientific training and have usually honed their craft on other data sets before coming to the financial world.

The fact of the matter is that there’s simply more efficacy to what these managers are doing than the vast majority of the discretionary trading world, and they’ve (mostly) put up the numbers to prove it. And I’m not just talking about returns, these groups are producing real alpha. Their strategies are meticulously backtested in and out of sample before going live, and are scaled up over time. Many discretionary managers launch a book with $500M in play from day one, I can count on one hand the number of systematic funds that have done that in the past 5 years.

And while some systematic funds don’t perform well, you’ll be hard pressed to find any massive blow ups akin to what’s regularly seen on the discretionary side. Pension funds can certainly deal with paying 2 and 20 if they have more confidence that their returns from year 1 through 3 aren’t going to all disappear in year

The flow of capital from discretionary to systematic strategies is going to continue, as it should. That will have its own repercussions, which we’re already starting to see.

4. Quants Dig For New Alpha

A 2012 tell-all book from a former Goldman Sachs trader revealed how the Great Vampire Squid often endearingly referred to their unsophisticated clients at “muppets.” While they rightfully got skewered for that comparison, they were certainly onto something when their trading desks would remark internally that they were basically taking candy from babies.

However, many of the muppets are gone now and that’s left far less alpha in the market to capture. Relative value and statistical arbitrage strategies are about capturing asset mispricings associated with the irrational behavioral aspects of fear and greed. This isn’t going to change any time soon, the muppets aren’t coming back, they’ve wised up. Less alpha overall will lead to a drop in the number of hedge funds and the amount of hedge fund assets that can generate enough alpha to command high fees.

It truly is amazing to watch a data set go from being an alpha to a beta over time. I’ve seen the sell side analyst estimates data set owned by Thomson Reuters IBES travel this path over the past 15 years. Yes, there will always be alpha available to be arbitraged which is associated with the irrational behavior of humans in markets, but most alpha generated by systematic traders is associated with an informational advantage.

About five years ago many of the classic stat-arb strategies stopped working due to an influx of competitors. There simply wasn’t enough alpha to go around. This precipitated the smartest firms to search for new data sets with predictive power, or reflexivity. Fast-forward a few years and an all out arms race is now under way.

I love to use the example of the company that is selling data captured from new car insurance registrations. They get this data daily, and it’s incredibly accurate at calling new car sales. So instead of waiting until the end of the quarter to find out how many vehicles GM sold, you can basically get a running count of growth on a daily basis. Obviously that’s going to give you an advantage in trading those auto names, that is until everyone else is using that data. At that point, the data set goes from providing alpha you can capture, to a data set that you must be looking at in order to avoid an informational disadvantage. In a sense, it becomes beta.

So the arms race is in full swing, and there is now a serious lack of qualified talent to analyze all of these different data sets and incorporate them into the existing multi-factor models. While the quantitative research process into the efficacy of a data set hasn’t changed much, firms are struggling to build a process around the testing pipeline. The most efficient firms like WorldQuant have been able to take advantage of that competency to move quickly and decisively to incorporate new alphas.

This brings me to my last point about the systematic testing process. In the next section of this article, I’m going to heavily malign the discretionary buy side for being fairly clueless about how to undertake this entire process. The truth is, even most (but not all) systematic quants suffer from a severe lack of creativity and original thought when it comes to generating hypotheses around how to take advantage of a given data set. From our experience working with discretionary firms at Estimize, they are two steps even further behind the quants as it relates to incorporating new data sets.

Let’s just go back to the car sales example for a second. Would you know exactly how to take advantage of that data to run an event study and generate alpha? Probably not. You’d likely want to talk with someone who’s been trading autos for 10+ years to get their take on what they think moves auto stocks and how having a good projection of sales would impact those names. A good quantitative research process requires an ex-ante hypothesis for some level of causation and not just correlation. We need to know roughly why something works, not just that it works, or else we won’t know why it stops working, and as history has proven, everything stops working at some point.

Being able to hand over an easily testable clean data set, and a bunch of original thoughts about how to generate alpha is imperative for data firms to succeed at this process.

5. Quantamental, Systamental, Factor Aware…Call It What You Want

The rise of the systematic quants and their use of these new data sets also had an impact on the poor returns of the discretionary world over recent years. First, the HFT guys killed the day traders making it impossible to pick up pennies. Next, the stat-arb guys crushed the swing traders playing in the couple of hours to one week timeframe. Were they the primary factor of poor discretionary returns? Probably not, but significant none of the less.

A few years ago the first big discretionary firms started making attempts to hire data scientists and acquire new data sources. They’ve mostly failed to integrate any of this into an actual investment process. Then about 6-9 months ago another chunk of the more forward thinking discretionary firms gave in to the realization that they needed to make big changes. It’s not as if discretionary PMs weren’t using data driven statistical approaches to gain an edge, or that none of them had quants on the desk to help, they were just very few and far between.

You may have seen Paul Tudor Jones almost publicly berating his organization in a strange showing of frustration from such a legendary investor. Steve Cohen has been very public about his attempt to shift Point72 in the data driven direction, even commenting that it’s incredibly hard to find good talent these days (we’ll get to this in a minute). The guys who have been successful in this game historically see the writing on the wall. Hell, even the first episode of season two for the show Billions features main character Bobby “Axe” Axelrod giving his team the condensed 3 minute version of this piece, albeit in a much louder tone. So whomever the producers of that show are talking to, this whole thing has seeped into the mainstream buy-side consciousness now.

The shift that needs to happen is similar to the way players were drafted in Michael Lewis’ book, “Moneyball”. Consider how hard the scouts fought against being replaced by algorithms that were far more accurate than they were, and even in the face of all this evidence, refusing to change. Then consider how much money was on the line in baseball, and the astronomically larger amount on the line in our world. You would think that would precipitate a much quicker shift, but in fact, it will only mean a slower one due to the fear of change when dealing with so much money.

As quants, we are taught how to go through the research process to validate the efficacy of a data set or tool. Everything is derived from this process, and there isn’t too much leeway, it is designed as good science. Yes, as mentioned above, you still need a level of creativity in order to do good research. However, discretionary managers don’t even have the framework for understanding how to do that research, or incorporate new things into their decision making process. This is the largest hurdle to making the shift, and I believe less than 20% of managers will clear it.

This shift isn’t just about using new data sets, like Estimize, or the car sales example, it’s about fundamentally buying into the notion that PMs need to be making investment decisions based on putting the odds in their favor by looking at statistics, and not just being gunslingers or bottoms up value guys. That’s an affront to their entire way of doing things, just as it was for the baseball scouts.

6. Algorithms + Human Experience = Optimal Trading

A passage from Michael Lewis’ latest book, “The Undoing Project,” speaks so directly to the issue discretionary firms face today. Lewis writes about a specific behavioral experiment performed on a set of first year residents and accomplished oncologists. In the experiment, the scientists asked the accomplished doctors to tell them how they make a decision regarding whether a patient has cancer from looking at an x-ray. The doctors all tended to give the scientists a 10 point checklist with a 1-10 rating for each of the 10 points, add up the points and you can accurately determine whether it’s cancer or benign. The scientists proceed to give a set of x-rays (the outcomes of which are known only to them) to the doctors and the residents, asking them to determine whether each is cancer or not. They also give the doctor’s checklist to the residents to use.

I think you can guess what happens next. The oncologists who supplied the rubric in the first place show almost zero ability above random to accurately determine whether the x-ray was cancer or not. They didn’t follow their own rubric, suffered from an astounding amount of representative heuristic, and failed to do their job well. Meanwhile, the first year residents were able to score far higher accuracy rates on average and therefore would have been able to help their patients. They were simply acting as the human measurement component of an algorithm.

Similarly, most discretionary PMs would likely supply a rubric for how they make decisions, but when it comes down to it, they don’t actually adhere to it. No set of new data or analytical tools thrown into the “mosaic of information” that the PM is supposed to be paying attention to will matter unless they are disciplined enough to remove their ego from the equation and reduce themselves to being a human algorithm.

There’s an inevitable question that arises from the above, what’s the point of the human PM if we’re going to ask humans to basically be algorithms? Why not just run a fully systematic strategy and remove the human all together after the quantitative research process is complete? Could a first year analyst and some good portfolio construction software more faithfully execute the signals than a PM with 20 years of experience? Science would seem to say yes. That said, there’s obviously a more optimal scenario where that 20 years of experience alongside the discipline to execute the rubric faithfully results in better outcomes due to the ability to see regime changes in the market, something quantitative strategies built on linear analysis have a hard time doing.

It’s my belief that good quantamental / systamental / factor-aware PMs can crush the systematic quants if they are disciplined. Systematic strategies are designed to make small bets across a lot of names using half a dozen or more different signals that each have a weighting in the stock selection and exposure model. A lot of them hit for singles, consistently. But that also means that when a really fat pitch comes down the plate based on all the data, they can’t swing for the fences. This is the advantage of discretionary managers. With the right discipline, they can take a big cut with a 7% position in their book when all the data lines up, and reap the rewards of the hard work.

While it’s been a tough run of it recently, there are reasons to believe this is a great time to enter the market with a solid quantitative approach to discretionary trading. The chart below shows that while there may be many secular headwinds for the discretionary investing world, the cyclical nature of this industry is extremely strong, and we’re certainly at the deepest part of the trough regarding performance, with only one direction to go.

7. There’s Plenty of Talent, You’re Just Hiring the Wrong People

The last part of this puzzle is obviously the people. And here’s the sad truth: the way that discretionary hedge funds have staffed themselves historically is almost criminal (there were actually some real criminals in there too!).

Picture the normal funnel to becoming a PM running a $500M long/short equity book. You grew up in a wealthy family in a wealthy town, usually in the New York metropolitan area, parts of Silicon Valley, Chicago or Michigan. You went to Harvard, Yale or Princeton. You took an IB analyst position at Goldman or another bulge bracket. You spent a few years there learning how to build a financial model before a hedge fund picked you up for an analyst spot. You made friends with your PM, who if you were lucky did well, and 5 years later when the firm had more capital than it knew what to do with, your PM told the firm to give you $200M to play with.

At no point in this process did you ever have to exhibit a lick of skill for the job that you’ve just been given. Yes, you are probably a very smart individual, and you worked hard, but we all know that smart does not equal good in the investment world. Every step along the way you were selected not for the trait which would make you the best qualified to do that job, you were selected because you jumped through the hoops which lead to the correct selection bias. The sad truth is that hedge funds are run by white dudes who grew up in Greenwich, and they like (and trust) working with white dudes who grew up in Greenwich and look like them.

And look, this isn’t some idealistic push for equality bullshit comment, it’s about results. If you are hiring these people exclusively, you are not selecting for skill and you will not be able to make the shift to a more data driven quantitative approach, I guarantee it. If I were starting a fund from scratch, I’d rather have a more racially, socioeconomically diverse group of kids from schools other than the Ivy’s than those from Yale who studied political science.

And don’t get me started on the lack of women running money. Every single study ever done says that they are more successful than men due to a range of behavioral and psychological factors. Yet firms tend to overlook women for PM positions due to their inability to play the game that gets them the capital allocation. And of course, we come back to the fact that the entire industry is designed to hire for people that look like the people who are currently in charge.

Firms need to start incorporating measurement of variables pre hiring that actually correlate to success as a PM. They need to start selecting for skill, not just smarts. Our Forcerank platform is beginning to be used for this purpose, and I expect others will pop up over time. I also expect some kind of psychometric testing firm to be created soon which has done the research to identify certain skills and traits that correspond to success in different strategies. You don’t want the same kind of people running momentum models as the ones running deep value.

There isn’t a lack of talent, you just need to look in the right places and be willing to elevate people who might not look, talk, or act like you.

8. Building the Right Team

The other major personnel issue we’re seeing firms grapple with is the question of how to structure their teams to incorporate the quantitative research and data science capability. Some approaches have been successful, and others have failed.

Each firm, whether quant or discretionary, is going to need a centralized infrastructure that is capable of imbibing a new data set and making it available across the firm. Many systematic multi-manager funds, and large centralized managers are already setting up data teams to search for, ingest, clean, and quickly analyze new data sets to test for alpha in their multi-factor models. The heads of these teams are getting paid big dollars, upwards of $2M a year to run this process that feeds the heart of the machine - and there aren’t many good ones out there. The imbalance of supply and demand for this position is causing some funds to make poor hiring decisions in order to simply get someone in the door. The role itself is incredibly multidisciplinary in nature and requires a strong understanding of the quantitative research process, a decent technical background, the ability to travel across the globe to conferences meeting with hundreds of potential vendors, sniffing out what’s real from what’s bullshit, determining what startups will be around tomorrow and which won’t, and then haggling over price. Please tell me which previous role prepares you for all of that?

The firms that don’t hire well here are going to fall behind and see their returns suffer as data sets more quickly than ever move from being alphas to betas as they get arbed. This doesn’t happen overnight, it takes years for alpha to get arbitraged from a data set, but many won’t have as much capacity as those previously, along with a larger stable of systematic managers, things will speed up.

The centralized infrastructure and data acquisition team is going to also house engineers, a product manager, and optimally a quant who can do basic descriptive work on a data set to determine whether it’s clean and reliable enough to have PMs use.

And that’s where the centralized team should end.

Each PM or “pod” should then have a quant, an engineer or two, and a data analyst placed on their desk directly. Here’s why. Each PM is going to be trading different names, and have a need to access different sets of information. Fighting over centralized quantitative research capacity with other pods is a disaster. And then receiving some kind of report that doesn’t fit into your actual process is useless. Each PM is going to have a different checklist or rubric with different signals. And the key is the data analyst, they need to have a deep understanding of the industries the PM is trading so that they can work in coordination with the PM and the quant to build a process that can be effectively utilized. I’ve seen people in this role who also have some coding experience so that they can rapidly prototype stuff for the quant before the centralized team goes out and does the job in a production-ready way. The quant, of course, will be testing different data sets for efficacy, and handing them over to the engineers to build factor models.

A quantitative approach and a commitment to data science by firms is not a thing you do in some other room. The only way this is going to work is if you build cross functional teams on the PM’s desk and support them with a data and infrastructure team at the top.

How Far Down the Rabbit Hole?

So if you’re a PM, do you need to take that data science class at night? Yes, but not for the reason you think. PMs aren’t going to be writing python code and working in R to do quantitative research, that’s not their job. But in order to effectively communicate and run their teams they are going to have to understand all the pieces to the process. And most of all, if they aren’t educated as to how all of this works, how are they ever going to trust the data and signals coming out of the process when the time comes to make buy and sell decisions?

On June 20th the L2Q conference hosted by Estimize is going to give discretionary PMs, analysts, and traders a one day overview of the different pieces they need to get up to speed on in order to effectively build and run their teams. The goal of the conference is not to have everyone walking away knowing everything, it’s meant as a jumping off point, to give a sense of perspective for where managers need to go next, and we’ll have the vendors there that can help them take the next steps to getting educated. We’ll also have a number of heavily vetted data vendors which can fit into this process and add alpha generating signals, including our own Estimize and Forcerank data sets.

Hope to see you there!And if you are interested in discovering more alpha using the Estimize data set, please contact us today!

#quant #quantitative #buyside #discretionary #hedgefunds

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mathematicianadda · 5 years ago

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Galileo’s theory of comets is hot air

Galileo thought comets were an atmospheric phenomenon, not physical bodies in outer space. How could he be so wrong when all his colleagues got it right? Perhaps because his theory was a convenient excuse for not doing any mathematical astronomy of comets. We also discuss his unsavoury ways of dealing with data in the case of double stars and the rings of Saturn.

Transcript

“Have you seen the fleeting comet with its terrifying tail?” That was the question on everyone’s lips in 1618. In that year a comet appeared that was “of such brightness that all eyes and minds were immediately turned toward it.” “Suddenly, men had no greater concern than that of observing the sky. Great throngs gathered on mountains and other very high places, with no thought for sleep and no fear of the cold.” “That stellar body with its menacing rays was considered a monstrous thing.” According to some prophets, the comet was a cosmic omen foretelling imminent disaster.

I quoted these vivid descriptions from Orazio Grassi: a contemporary of Galileo. These two had a big fight about comets. Grassi was a fine scientist. He was basically right about comets. Galileo, on the other hand, was way wrong on this. His theory of comets is extremely poor. However, Galileo managed to spin this somehow and still come out on top, in the eyes of many modern readers, despite being absolutely wrong as a matter of scientific fact.

This is quintessential Galileo: wrong on science, but a rhetorical master. Galileo could write a self-help book called “How to appear to win any debate even when you’re wrong from start to finish on every single point of substance.” If Galileo is the father of anything it is this art form. So you’re looking to pick up some tricks from that playbook then Galileo is your guy, and the comets dispute is the place to start.

Galileo skilfully caricatures his opponent as an obstinate enemy of science who relies on books and the words of authorities instead of using facts and reason and observation. People eat this up, this propaganda. Galileo is like a populist politician. He’s giving people a pleasing narrative that flatters and validates their worldview. Truth has little to do with anything.

That’s an overview of the story. Now let’s look at the details.

The science of comets. Like Grassi says, “the single role of the mathematician” is merely to “explain the position, motion, and magnitude of those fires,” that is to say the comets. So none of that superstition nonsense, just calculate the paths and distances and speeds and so on. Indeed, this is what mathematicians had been doing for generations. Tycho Brahe, for instance, worked extensively on comets in the generation before Galileo. He gave thorough mathematical analyses of their motions, as a mathematician should.

Now, of course, it would be difficult for Galileo to enter this game, since he was such a poor mathematician, as I have argued before. If Galileo had been honest he would have said: frankly, all those detailed calculations that Tycho Brahe and the other big-boy mathematicians are doing, that’s all too technical for me to follow.

But of course he doesn’t want to say that. He needs to save face. He needs an excuse for ignoring what all serious mathematical astronomers were saying about comets. Sure enough, he is quick to offer such excuses. First he claims that mathematical accounts of comets are hopelessly inconsistent. Here are his own words:

“Observations made by Tycho and many other reputable astronomers upon the comet’s parallax vary among themselves. If complete faith be placed in them, one must conclude that the comet was simultaneously below the sun and above it,” for example.

So the mathematical astronomy of comets is just a bunch of useless nonsense, you see. In fact Galileo has an even more fundamental argument for this. Namely that comets are not physical bodies travelling through space at all. Rather comets are nothing but a chimerical atmospheric phenomena. “In my opinion,” says Galileo, comets have “no other origin than that a part of the vapour-laden air surrounding the earth is for some reason unusually rarefied, and … is struck by the sun, and made to reflect its splendour.” A comet is like the northern lights. Galileo specifically makes this comparison.

So that’s Galileo’s very convenient excuse for why he doesn’t engage with the best mathematicians working on comets. This way he is able to pretend that: well, you see, it’s not that I can’t do these calculations, it’s just that I don’t want to, because they all just contradict themselves anyway, and it’s all nonsense in the first place because you can’t do mathematical astronomy of some vapour-cloud optical illusion thing. That’s a futile as chasing a rainbow.

That’s textbook Galileo. If you don’t believe my thesis that Galileo was a poor mathematician, the you tell me a better explanation for this. Why did Galileo propose such an idiotic theory of comets, that is dead wrong and obviously way worse than the common-sense standard opinion among all mathematical astronomers at the time? I gave you one explanation. I don’t think you can come up with a better one. Nobody has so far.

Galileo’s claim that the mathematical astronomy of comets was incoherent and self-contradictory did not convince anybody. Kepler was flabbergasted that someone who calls himself a geometer could write such drivel. Here are Kepler’s words:

“Galileo, if anyone, is a skilled contributor of geometrical demonstrations and he knows what a difference there is between the incredible observational diligence of Tycho and the indolence common to many others in this most difficult of all activities. Therefore, it is incredible that he would criticize as false the observations of all mathematicians in such a way that even those of Tycho would be included.”

Indeed. It is “incredible” that a “skilled geometer” could make such ludicrous claims. But of course the paradox disappears if one recognises that Galileo is not a skilled geometer after all.

Galileo also offered another very poorly considered argument against the correct view of comets as orbiting bodies. The orbits of comets are clearly much bigger than that of the planets in our solar system. Galileo tries to argue that this is unrealistic. Here is what he says: “How many times would the world have to be expanded to make enough room for an entire revolution [of a comet] when one four-hundredth part of its orbit takes up half of our universe?” This is a poor argument, because the universe must indeed be very big and then some according to Copernican theory. This is because of the absence of stellar parallax, as we have discussed before. Since the earth’s motion is observationally undetectable, the orbit of the earth must be minuscule in relation to the distance to the stars. That means there is plenty of room for comets. But Galileo conveniently pretends otherwise in his argument against comets. Evidently Galileo “was so intent on refusing Tycho[’s treatment of comets] that he failed to notice that he was pleading for a universe in which there would be no room for the heliocentric theory” either.

Galileo’s vapour theory of comets, meanwhile, is inconsistent with basic observations, as he himself admits. If comets are nothing but “rarefied vapour”---that is to say, some kind of pocket of thin gas---then you’d imagine that their natural motion would be straight up, like a helium balloon. Indeed Galileo does propose that comets have such paths. But then he at once admits that this doesn’t fit the facts: “I shall not pretend to ignore that if the material in which the comets takes form had only a straight motion perpendicular to the surface of the earth …, the comet should have seemed to be directed precisely toward the zenith, whereas, in fact, it did not appear so. … This compels us either to alter what was stated, … or else to retain what has been said, adding some other cause for this apparent deviation. I cannot do the one, nor should I like to do the other.” Bummer, it doesn’t work. But Galileo sees no way out, so he just leaves it at that.

Galileo’s contemporaries were not impressed. “[Grassi’s] criticism of Galileo is on the whole penetrating and to the point. He was quick to spot Galileo’s inconsistencies. Grassi produced an impressive array of arguments to show that vapours could not explain the appearance and the motion of the comets [as Galileo had claimed].” For instance, the speeds of comets do not fit Galileo’s theory. According to Galileo’s theory, the vapours causing the appearance of comets rise uniformly from the surface of the earth straight upwards. Therefore the comet should appear to be moving fast when it is close to the horizon, and then much slower when it is higher in the sky. Just imagine a red helium balloon released by a child at a carnival: it first it shoots off quickly, but soon you can barely tell if it’s rising anymore, even though it keep going up at more or less the same speed, because your distance and angle of sight is so different. But comets do not behave like that. Detailed observations of the comet of 1618 showed a much more constant speed than Galileo’s hypothesis requires.

Now let’s see how Galileo responded to this. Not by improving the scientific quality of his arguments, mind you. But with some clever rhetorical tricks that has many readers fooled to this day. Many find Galileo’s rousing mockery of his opponent so satisfying that they are seduced into celebrating it as proof of Galileo’s philosophical acumen. You can read Galileo’s triumphant put-downs of his opponent and go “yeah, crush him!” It’s the same kind of pleasure as watching the villain get punched in the face in an action movie. But a little reflection shows that this hero-versus-villain dynamic that Galileo tries to cultivate is a dishonest fiction that has very little to do with reality.

One of Galileo’s most celebrated passages concerns eggs. The context is this. Grassi makes the absolutely correct point that comets, if they entered the earth’s atmosphere, would quickly heat up to very great temperatures due to the friction of the air. In support of this point, Grassi quotes a 10th-century Byzantine author, Suidas, who claimed that “The Babylonians whirl[ed] about eggs placed in slings … [and] by that force they also cooked the raw eggs.” Grassi also quotes passages describing similar phenomena in Ovid, Lucan, Lucretius, Virgil, and Seneca. And then he says: “For who believes that men who were the flower of erudition and speak here of things which were in daily use in military affairs would wish egregiously and impudently to lie? I am not one to cast this stone at those learned men.”

Galileo is unable to answer the substantive point. Indeed, he thinks comets entering the atmosphere would cool down because of the wind rather than heat up because of friction. Galileo is wrong and Grassi is right about the actual scientific issue about comets. But that’s nothing Galileo’s trademarked sophistry can’t work around. Galileo finds a way to “win” the debate anyway, without actually offering any correct scientific claim regarding the actual subject of comets. He does this by gloatingly attacking Grassi for relying on books rather than experimental evidence:

“If [Grassi] wants me to believe that the Babylonians cooked their eggs by whirling them in slings, … I reason as follows: If we do not achieve an effect which others formerly achieved, then it must be that in our operations we lack something that produced their success. And if there is just one single thing we lack, then that alone can be the true cause. Now we do not lack eggs, nor slings, nor sturdy fellows to whirl them; yet our eggs do not cook, but merely cool down faster if they happen to be hot. And since nothing is lacking to us except being Babylonians, then being Babylonians is the cause of the hardening of eggs, and not friction of the air. … Is it possible that [Grassi] has never observed the coolness produced on his face by the continual change of air when he is riding post? If he has, then how can he prefer to believe things related by other men as having happened two thousand years ago in Babylon rather than present events which he himself experiences?”

Like I said, not a few modern philosophers blindly and uncritically fall for Galileo’s rhetoric. Here’s a typical quote on this. It’s from the Wiley-Blackwell book “Philosophy of Science: An Historical Anthology.” Here’s what the editors of this popular textbook say about Galileo’s argument: “Galileo shot back with a blistering critique in which he pillories [Grassi] and articulates a tough-minded empiricism as an alternative to the mere citation of venerable authority.”

Galileo would no doubt be very pleased that so many readers still to this day come away with the impression that “tough-minded empiricism” is what sets him apart from his opponents. That is precisely the intended effect of his ploy. It has very little basis in reality, however. Just a few pages earlier in the same treatise, Grassi describes extensively various laboratory experiments he has carried out himself with regard to another point. “I decided that no industry or labor ought to be spared in order to prove this by many and very careful experiments,” says this supposed obstinate enemy of empirical science. So the notion that Galileo is the only one “tough-minded” enough to reject authority in favour of experiment is very far off the mark.

Even in the passage criticised, Grassi is clearly not engaged in “the mere citation of venerable authority.” Rather he honestly and openly cites sources purporting to truthfully report empirical information, just like any scientist today cites previous works without re-checking all the experiments personally. Grassi does not believe that these authors are automatically right because they are “venerable authorities.” Rather he explicitly considers the possibility that they are wrong, but estimates, quite reasonably, that they are probably right.

For that matter, Galileo himself was not above believing falsehoods on the basis of “venerable authorities.” We have seen him make an error of this type in his theory of tides. He had heard somewhere that high and low tide in Lisbon occurred twelve hours apart rather than six, and jumped at the chance to cite this false information as “evidence” for his erroneous theory. To take another example, Galileo also believed the ancient myth of Archimedes setting fire to enemy ships by means of mirrors focussing the rays of the sun. This myth is “credible,” Galileo says. Descartes sensibly took the opposite view.

Altogether, the simplistic contrast between Grassi the credulous believer in authority and Galileo the experimenter has little basis in fact. Galileo is scoring easy points with his taunts about the eggs, by dishonestly pretending that a simplistic point about empiricism was the crux of the matter.

It is worth keeping the context of the passage in mind. Indeed, the pro-Galileo interpretation I quoted above from the Wiley-Blackwell textbook comes with its own origin story:

“In the course of his career [Galileo] engaged in many controversies and made powerful enemies. One of those enemies was the Jesuit Grassi, who published an attack on some of Galileo’s works.”

This framing goes well with the notion of the “tough” Galileo bravely defending himself against “attacks” from the “powerful” establishment. But the reality is quite different. Grassi was not a “powerful enemy”: he was a middling college professor just like Galileo. And the conflict did not start with Grassi “attacking” Galileo, but precisely the other way around. Grassi published a fine lecture on comets in which he argued, correctly, that the absence of parallax shows that comets are beyond the moon. Galileo is not mentioned in this work. Galileo read Grassi’s lecture and filled the margins, as one scholar has observed, with an entire vocabulary’s worth of savage expletives. Buffoon, bumbling idiot, piece of utter stupidity, and so on.

Galileo then published an attack on Grassi which was not much more restrained than these marginal notes. Grassi replied to it. It is this reply that is called “an attack on some of Galileo’s works” in the pro-Galilean quotation above.

So, to sum up, Galileo’s celebrated “pillorying” of Grassi was not a “tough” defence against an “attack” on “some of his works” by “powerful enemies.” The “enemy” was not a “powerful” arm of “authority,” but a conscientious scholar who was right about comets based on good scientific arguments that Galileo rejected. And the enemy was not a cruel aggressor going after “some works” by Galileo unprovoked; rather, the “some works” in question was an aggressive attack initiated by Galileo in the first place. Furthermore, Galileo’s enemy did not favour venerable authority over empiricism, but rather based his analysis of comets on much more thorough empirical work than Galileo did.

Ok, that’s what I had to say about comets.

Let me tell you another story: Double stars. The telescope revealed the existence of “double stars,” meaning stars that had appeared as just a single point of light to the naked eye but then when you looked at them with good magnification in a telescope they turned out to consist of two separate stars.

Double stars had the potential to prove Copernicus right. This was pointed out to Galileo by his friend Castelli. Castelli was excited about double stars, because he hoped they could be used to prove that the earth moves around the sun because of how the double star would change appearance in the course of a year.

The idea is the following. You look at the double star in your telescope. You see that it is not one star but two: one bigger and one smaller. Now you make the assumption that probably all stars are pretty much the same. They are all just so many suns, as it were. So the smaller-looking one is probably about the same size, in reality. It’s just further away.

Now let’s see what happens when the earth moves. Let’s try to picture this. You can use your index fingers. Hold up one finger in front of you. Now put your other index finger further away from you but aligned with the first one in a single line of sight. Now if you move your head slightly to one side, you will see the two fingers “move apart,” so to speak. And if you move your head to the other side, they will move apart in the other direction. So the closer finger, which corresponds to the bigger star, is sometimes to the left and sometimes to the right of the other one. Moving your head means moving the earth. If the earth is truly moving like Copernicus said then we should be able to observe this kind of thing: stars “switching places” in this way. This would certainly not happen if the earth was stationary, so we have striking and undeniable evidence for the motion of the earth.

This is a parallax effect. We spoke about parallax before. Astronomers had failed to detect parallax in the past, even though Copernican theory predicts that parallax must be a thing. The traditional method to look for parallax was based on trying to detect subtle shifts in the relative position of stars using tricky precision measurements of angles. The double star case would prove the matter in a much more striking and immediate way, without the need for technical measurements: anyone would be able to see with their own eyes the undeniable fact the the two stars switched places in the course of a year. And since with this method everything takes place within the field of view of the telescope, there was reason to hope that this new technology could enable success where conventional naked-eye astronomy had failed.

Castelli urged Galileo to make observations of double stars for this purpose, as indeed Galileo did in 1617, when he made detailed observations of the double star Mizar. Galileo used the above principle that however many times smaller a star is, it is that many times further away. With this method Galileo estimated that Mizar A and B were 300 and 450 times further away than the sun, respectively. This means the above effect should easily be noticeable: “Mizar A and Mizar B should have swung around each other dramatically as Galileo observed them over time.” But that didn’t happen. They didn’t change position at all. Everything remained exactly stationary, as if the earth did not move.

Today we know that all the stars in the night sky are much further away than Galileo estimated, and much too far away for any effects of this sort to be detectable with the telescopes of Galileo’s time. Galileo’s distance estimates were way off because of certain optical effects that make it impossible to judge the distances of stars in the manner outlined above. It would be anachronistic to blame Galileo for not knowing these things, which were only understood much later.

But Galileo’s way of discussing the matter in the Dialogue is not above reproach. He describes the above procedure but frames it hypothetically: “if some tiny star were found by the telescope quite close to some of the larger ones,” they would, if the above effect could be observed, “appear in court to give witness to such motion … of the earth.” “This is the very idea that later won Galileo renown and for which he was to be remembered by parallax hunters in the centuries that followed. While it is generally thought that Galileo never tried to detect stellar parallax himself, he is credited with this legacy to future generations.” In reality he deserves no renown, because the idea was not his own. It had already been explained to him in detail not only by Castelli, who discovered the double star Mizar and explained its importance for parallax to Galileo, but also even earlier by Ramponi in 1611. There is no indication that Galileo had though of any of this before his friends explained it to him.

Furthermore, Galileo’s discussion in the Dialogue is deceitful. He didn’t want to state the truth, of course, which is that he tried the experiment and it came out the wrong way; the data said that the earth did not move. But that’s only important if you are an honest scientist concerned with objectively evaluating the evidence. Galileo instead finds it more convenient to pretend that this falsifying data doesn’t exists. Instead he presents the double star idea as a suggestion for further research, and pretends that he hasn’t already carried it out. That way he doesn’t have to explain actual data or engage seriously with actual current astronomy like the system of Tycho for instance which agreed better with this data. It was much easier for Galileo to suppress his data and disingenuously insinuate that the outcome of the observation would be the opposite of what he knew it to be.

Now I will turn to another topic. The rings of Saturn. We all know that iconic cartoon-planet look. But that image only became clear some twenty years after Galileo’s death. Christiaan Huygens published a book on Saturn in 1659 where the rings are depicted with perfect clarity just as we are used to seeing it.

But the telescopes of Galileo’s day were not good enough to show the rings of Saturn with any clarity. Instead Galileo thinks the rings are actually two moons. Saturn is “made of three stars,” says Galileo. The planet has two “ears,” as it were. We can’t blame Galileo for limitations that were inherent to his time. It was no fault of his that he didn’t discern the rings of Saturn. Neither did any of his contemporaries.

However, we can blame Galileo for his lack of balance in evaluating the evidence. He does not say, as an honest scientist might, that his theory about Saturn’s “companion stars” is the best guess on the available evidence and that we can’t know for sure until we have better telescopes. Instead he boldly proclaims it as certainty that Saturn is “accompanied by two stars on its sides,” “as perfect instruments reveal to perfect eyes.” Those are Galileo’s words. And they are of course very hubristic. But that’s Galileo for you, always overstating his case, not least when he is wrong.

In the same vein, Galileo overconfidently declared that the appearance of Saturn’s companions would never change:

“I, who have examined [Saturn] a thousand times at different times, with an excellent instrument, can assure you that no change at all is perceived in him: and the same reason … can render us certain that, likewise, there will be none.”

Bombastic certainty as usual. All the more embarrassing then when in fact the appearances did change radically soon thereafter. Here’s Galileo again, just a few months later:

“I found [Saturn] solitary without the assistance of the supporting stars. … Now what is to be said about such a strange metamorphosis? Perhaps the two smaller stars … have vanished and fled suddenly? Perhaps Saturn has devoured his own children?”

This is a reference to classical mythology. Saturn the god “devoured his newborn children to forestall a prophecy that he would be overthrown by one of his sons.”

In any case, one moment Galileo says that “thousands” of observations prove that Saturn’s companion stars will never change, and then just months later he has to admit that, whoops, it turns out that that exact thing he said would never happen actually took place almost right away. That was some bad publicity, especially at a time when many doubted the reliability of his telescope.

The so-called disappearance of Saturn’s ring was due to the earth passing through the plane of the ring, so that a line of sight from earth was parallel to the plane of the ring. This made the ring invisible, just like a sheet of paper becomes vanishingly thin if you look at it exactly sideways.

But Galileo did not interpret it that way. Instead, he proposed what he considered to be some “probable conjectures” about the future appearance of Saturn’s companion stars. This theory was based on attributing to them a slow revolution, like very slow-moving moons. Later he praised himself for “thinking in my own special way” and marvelled at how “I took the courage” to make such brave conjectures. Those are Galileo’s own words, praising himself.

Indeed, Galileo liked his model so much that he also “took the courage” to lie about having made an observation verifying it. He claims that he “saw Saturn triple-bodied this year [1612], at about the time of the summer solstice.” But modern calculations show that the ring of Saturn would have been vanishingly thin at this time. There was a paper on this in the Journal for History of Astronomy not long ago. Here is the conclusion from the paper: “Clearly [Galileo] could not have observed the ring at the summer solstice of 1612. … Yet the picture of the Saturnian system that was accepted by Galileo implied that the ring should have been visible, so much so that he made a claim to this effect that we know must have been untrue.” Oh well. That’s business as usual in Galileo land.

This concludes our discussion of Galileo’s work with the telescope. Next time I believe we shall have to get to the real hot potato: Galileo and the church.

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