#alternatively: R Has No Sense of Consequence

[naamahdarling]

What are the elevator game and Three Kings?

They're modern folklore/urban legend ritual games games akin to Bloody Mary, spread by creepypasta memes across the internet for thrills and chills. (I actually love creepypasta. There's some excellent horror in the genre. Ted the Caver and Candle Cove are both super cool, those aren't hard to find.)

The Elevator Game supposedly originates in Japan or South Korea, and involves getting into an elevator and pressing the buttons in a certain sequence in order to reach a surreal otherworld, with dire consequences should they fail to follow all the rules. It doesn't have a goal or reward, just the appeal of accessing a creepy alternate reality. It's a fairly popular bit of modern folklore and I enjoy it for its modern yet classic feel and its specificity. This is a game that it is actually feasible to play, unlike a lot of other modern creepypasta ritual games, which can be very complicated.

The Three Kings Ritual is another creepypasta ritual game, and it's a fucking banger. I HIGHLY recommend you read it in full.

It has a great name, great symbolism, a creepy as shit setup, and a genuine chance, I think, at getting something fucked up to happen (in the sense that you could very easily experience some trippy visual distortion and possibly some auditory stuff as well from the white noise of the fan).

It genuinely put my hairs up the first time with these bits (the bolded and italicized bits are of particular note):

Place one chair in the center of the room. ....Place the other two chairs exactly to the left and right, facing your throne. The distance between your throne and that of your queen and fool should be about the length of your arm to each side, more or less. Place the two large mirrors on the queen and fool chairs left and right of you, facing you (and each other). Try your best to have them stand at a 90 degree angle (or else you may get more or less than three kings). If you sit on your throne facing straight ahead (north), you should be able to perceive your own reflection in each of the two mirrors without actually having to turn your head nor your eyes to do so. If you see your own reflection in the corner of your eye, just barely there, then you've done it right.

So you can see how this would lend itself to seeing things. Mirrors are already creepy. With a small light in a dark room, it gets worse. This isn't about a demon or vengeful spirit, just...presences, which is much creepier to me because on some level it feels more plausible.

Look straight ahead, at the darkness. Not at the candle, not at the mirrors, just straight ahead. Eagle-eyed readers surely noticed I didn't say during setup which chair was queen and which chair was fool. That's because it's your job to find out. And from their point of view, you are either their queen or their fool, too. Hence three kings.

Fucking hell.

Again the goal is nebulous. The original text leaves so many things unanswered. Are we to converse with these entities, to ask questions? What the actual fuck happens if you get the angle wrong and get more than two spirits?

All I know is that I am curious. This is absolutely my favorite ritual game.

[oxyvisualanalysis-fa23]

Discussion leader presentation 

AHA - Take On Me:

Take on Me by Aha is centred around the singer's interest to woo a romantic interest and persuade him to accept him as her lover. The title of the song, “Take on Me” signifies his plea for her to take a chance on him. Although his love for her is genuine, he struggles with shyness and therefore it is difficult for him to express his feelings to this particular woman. Interestingly, the lady also appears somewhat hesitant or reserved in her response to his advances, occasionally displaying shyness herself. Nevertheless, the singer is determined to win her affection while the opportunity is present. Consequently, most of the song revolves around his earnest appeal for her to embrace his love and be open to the affection he is offering.

The music video for "Take On Me" is known for its distinctive combination of live-action and pencil-sketch animation, which creates a unique visual style. It tells a story of a woman who enters a comic book world and interacts with the animated protagonist, all while blending with the real world. The video effectively blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, as the characters move between the two worlds. This creates a sense of wonder and excitement, making it a memorable visual experience.

We're talking away

I don't know what I'm to say

I'll say it anyway

Today is another day to find you

Shyin' away

Oh, I'll be comin' for your love, okay

These first lyrics capture a sense of longing, determination, and hope in the pursuit of romantic love. The singer is willing to take a chance and make an effort to win the affection of someone they are interested in, even if it means overcoming uncertainty.

Ferdinand de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics"

Although not directly related to A-ha's "Take On Me" music video, some parallels can be drawn. The video features live-action and animation, signifying different realities. This shift in signs, akin to Saussure's theory, underscores the arbitrary relationship between signifiers and signifieds. The woman's transition from reality to the animated world signifies a deliberate change in meaning, reflecting her desire for adventure and escape. Boundaries between these realms blur, reflecting Saussure's idea of combining and blending signs to add depth to the narrative. Though Saussure's work pertains to language, its concepts can be applied to analyze the video's narrative structure and the interplay between signs and meanings, enriching the viewer's experience.

Roland Barthes' "Mythologies" 

The video employs semiotics, playing with signs and symbols by juxtaposing real-world live-action and animated comic book sequences. These shifts influence how viewers interpret the narrative, reflecting the manipulation of signs and symbols akin to Barthes' concepts.

In "Mythologies," Barthes delves into the construction of myths through signification. In the video, the comic book becomes a mythological element, symbolizing an alternate reality. The use of signs and symbols in the video's narrative serves as a modern form of myth making. Furthermore, Barthes' exploration of consumer culture's role in creating myths around everyday objects finds resonance in the video. The comic book becomes a culturally significant symbol for the characters.

Peter Gabriel- Sledgehammer

Music Video: Peter Gabriel - "Sledgehammer"

"Sledgehammer" is a song by British musician Peter Gabriel, released in 1986. The music video for this song is known for its innovative use of stop-motion animation. The video was directed by Stephen R. Johnson features a variety of surreal and imaginative scenes, often involving unconventional and whimsical imagery.

Similar to A-ha's "Take On Me," the "Sledgehammer" video undergoes a striking visual transformation. In "Take On Me," the transformation occurs between live-action and comic book animation, while in "Sledgehammer," it involves stop-motion animation and claymation. Both videos use these visual shifts to create an otherworldly and fantastical atmosphere.Both videos play with the concept of narrative, taking viewers on a journey that blurs the lines between reality and imagination.

"Take On Me" features a love story that transcends the boundaries of a comic book, while "Sledgehammer" explores a surreal dream-like narrative filled with unconventional and symbolic elements.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 

The video features a significant transformation of the characters between two worlds. How does this theme of transformation relate to the concept of self-identity? What can we learn from the characters' experiences of changing their reality and appearance to find love and connection?

Take On Me" uses metaphors such as the transition from the comic book world to reality. Do they challenge or reinforce prevailing social norms and expectations regarding love and adventure, and how do these interpretations resonate with today's audiences?

Take On Me" is an iconic '80s song. Why do you think music from this era, including "Take On Me," continues to resonate with audiences across different age groups? How does it capture the spirit and emotions of its time while remaining timeless?

[teacherintransition]

High School

Wait …what?

Wasn’t that like forty years ago?

I graduated from high school in 1984. Even at the tender age of eighteen, I was into transitioning. I transitioned to college life, fatherhood, marriage, career, multiple fatherhood, home ownership, parenting kids through college, middle age, retirement (current teacher in transition), world and country traveler to …uh, now! High school? That thirty nine years, three sons, one wife, eight dogs, two diplomas, a mortgage and four grandchildren ago. WTF? Why does it matter so much? It’s such a brief period in our lives yet it carries such tremendous, emotional baggage. Some of it I get; if you married your high school sweetheart or were an athletic or academic superstar. I wasn’t. I carried books home five times …literally five times in four years. By the beginning of my junior year, I had quit all athletics and committed myself to the high Art of being a sophomoric, immature, n’er do well class clown. I engaged in nothing socially redeeming while in high school and played a PG-13/R rated “Animal House” or more likely a “Dazed and Confused” homage. Fun times, but not glorious.

Three members of the Great Quadrumvirate celebrated their 40th high school reunion last week. (They are a year or two older than me) They did all the usual: salute to fallen classmates; attended the high school football game, gave out cheesy awards; took pics and drank just enough to remind them that they are no longer eighteen. I myself never attended my 10th, 20th, 25th or 30th reunions and I’m certain I won’t go next year to our 40th. I dunno why. I did create an alternative soirée: The Low Class, No Class Anti-reunion for the 20th, 25th. The real deal just didn’t appeal to me. I literally talk to three people from those years (five if you count my wife and twin brother) Several classmates are persona non gratia and other close friends have moved on from this realm. But even with all that, the feelings and emotions of that era sneak back into my psyche. I’m at a loss.

Why is it that these four years can be so idyllic and emotionally crippling at the same time? Some guys can never grow past it, some guys don’t survive it, some …me …have been past it for decades. Life changed quickly and dramatically for me and I became insta-adult. That circumstance and disappearance of my friends probably has a place into why I got past it so quickly; yet the memories can be quite vivid. All leading back to the conundrum …why the powerful emotional bond?

I taught junior high and high school for thirty years and looking back, perhaps the answer is a bit clear. Putting aside the obvious situations of high school sweethearts and special friends …there was/is a dreamlike sense of being stronger than reality. It is the last time we are safe from the struggles of the real world, the last time we are protected from consequence, and the last time we are free to dream without the encumbrance of the reality. We could be anything. Every student athlete was sure they were going pro; every bookworm was going to be a writer; we were all going to be rich and marry beautiful people! It was all ripe for the taking. Disappointment and discouragement were foreign languages. We could dream anything. We had a classmate who was going to design Rock album covers …and he did, for our junior year book. He was gonna do it! I was going to photograph for National Geographic, I had a helluva 35mm SLR rig …it was gonna happen! My brother was going to be a truck driver, several buddies were going to be rock stars. We planned with unrestricted vigor and had very, very little understanding of how tragedy, failure and disappointment were and are regular features of living.

I’m not implying at all that life since then has been less than wonderful; I’ve had a great life thus far and will go forward making dreams come true; but I have wisdom now. I like wisdom, I still like being a smart ass, but do I want to relive those years? No, well, …no, not not at all. But sometimes, that mindset of magic possibilities creeps back in and you think, maybe …why not? I can still dream …can’t I ?

Just for a moment, I was back at school

And felt that old familiar pain

And as I turned to make my way back home

The snow turned into rain*

*Fogleberg, Dan; “Same Old Lang Syne;” The Innocent Age; Full Moon Records; November, 1980

[fl00mie]

THISSSSS

i've actually seen pretty good takes on this post like @toffeebrew's but i felt they said enough on their own and i wasn't going to add anything really useful, these right here ^ cover points more relatable to artists in general and opens the eyes of the community to see the bridge ink can become, that is the most interesting thing about him!! how close he can make you feel to your creations is unimaginable

something that toffee mentioned was that there was nothing wrong with using sans to create a fan character, they're absolutely right, but sey gave a possible and very coherent answer to this, regardless of what comyet has replied to these questions (just as everyone at the time, she loved sans) it makes a lot of sense to me that she'd use precisely the most overrated character in the game, or in other words the most loved one, because it would clearly increase interest in the fandom, which is what ink himself was looking for! be close to each of the creators (animators, artists, musicians, etc.) and what better way to get closer than by representing what the fans love, right?

in no other media i have seen a similar character, of course i've seen characters that seek the general good, characters that break the fourth wall and any of the individual concepts ink covers but, i see ink so well constructed (in terms of story and reason to be, both character and person) that nothing really feels forced

toffee listed several of the interesting concepts about everything ink sans encompasses: his soul and emotions which is a VERY broad and fascinating topic; how he sees the characters in each universe and outside of these, his fathers for example; his role as a "guardian of AUs" and why he proclaimed himself so, his ideology regarding creators AND their creations; his trauma and phobia that ends up being the cause and consequence of everything; among many other things!!!

a few days ago while checking r/undertale i saw a meme disparaging the fangames that revolved around sans, and while i understand how much the community had to go through with all this fever of sans and sans and sans everywhere, i don't feel that was the way to deal with the issue, or at least not take it that far! we all have to know how to embrace each part of the fandom as long as they don't do any kind of harm to anyone- pffft what kind of harm could fans who appreciate one character more than the rest do?

my point is, after several years of existence and coexistence, people have been criticizing everything more superficially, such as judging AUs only because their sans are the ones that receive the most attention when they completely ignore the good stories that are written, an AU isn't automatically bad if its only relevant character is a sans, saying it like that sounds pretty dumb🤭 maybe i can understand it from people who have been in the community for years, but if new folks who come across the phenomenon of alternate universes are guided by popular opinion, it doesn't turn out well for anyone!

i went a little off the beaten track, appreciate ink who genuinely feels bad if creators aren't happy with his work! hehe

istg it hurts to be an ink lover/fan/enjoyer in the eyes of those outside the fandom

ink might seem like an op sans for no reason at first impression and i can understand why people think that.. he travels through universes, he's the only character in his world (the one who's known as the most overrated character in the game which makes it even more repellent, i guess), among other reasons

i haven't seen almost any direct hate towards him (referring to canon, the genuine hate i've seen so far has been based on underverse, that although it's quite likely his image has been tarnished by the series, i want to refer more to those who aren't familiar with AUs in general) but, since i returned to this community i notice how he's not referred to as a fan favorite (anymore?), at least in the popular videos i find on youtube and on twitter it's even worse, i've seen them call him overrated multiple times

it's the fact that i manage to empathize a lot with him that makes me feel.. a bit sad maybe? because he's more than just another meaningless sans, his story and personality are really good and the fact that he's a sans is just a preference of his creator, that may have aged poorly but it doesn't take away how good and complex the character still is

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review: Y2K (2024)

Y2K (2024)

Rated R for bloody violence, strong sexual content/nudity, pervasive language, and teen drug/alcohol use

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2024/12/review-y2k-2024.html>

Score: 3 out of 5

The '90s have become for my generation what the '50s were for my parents' generation. It's funny, given that I still remember movies like Pleasantville and Blast from the Past that were actually made in the '90s and presented the '50s as the utter antithesis to such, an era of wholesome family values and patriotism versus the decadent and depraved times in which a lot of people believed we were living back then. (Or, alternatively, stories like Fallout and -- again -- Pleasantville that explored the flip side of this, depicting the '50s as an era of authoritarianism and social repression that probably shouldn't be romanticized.) And yet, while the finer contours of '90s nostalgia are obviously different from those of the '50s, framing it not as a time when people were more morally upstanding but one where they were cooler and more chill, the broad strokes are similar: it was a more innocent time when everybody more or less shared the same values and most of society's "real" problems were assumed to have been solved.

And just like the '50s, everybody has a theory as to where it all went wrong and the dream of the '90s fell apart. People on all corners of the political spectrum have used this question for partisan ax-grinding, to say nothing of the impact of 9/11, but one rather apolitical theory that I'm partial to is that the internet was what killed it. The subject of breathless hype at the time (and well into the next two decades) from hacker and techie culture and the nascent Silicon Valley tech industry about how it was gonna revolutionize the world and bring us into a new golden age, its actual consequences for society have been far more of a mixed bag. On one hand, it empowered previously marginalized voices and let them speak truth to power, allowed academics and niche communities to network and share their ideas, and allowed independent artists and journalists to cut out the middleman of an often extortionary mainstream media and entertainment industry. On the other hand, however, it also elevated unhinged conspiracy theorists, hostile foreign powers, and rank bigots, allowing them too to network and spew retrograde, anti-intellectual garbage, all while the shared culture that we had dissolved into a mass of subcultures and the tech industry slowly but surely became a corporate behemoth even worse than the "legacy media" it displaced.

It's this theory that the movie Y2K, in its better moments, is sympathetic to and tilts towards. It's a movie about the worst predictions about the Y2K bug coming to pass and then some, in the form of a sentient AI computer virus that hijacks everything with a computer chip in it in order to exterminate humanity. It's a very dumb and silly movie whose presentation of computer technology is laughably inaccurate to the point of explicit parody, and whose sense of humor is overreliant on '90s pop culture references and plot points lifted from other, better teen movies. Fortunately, once the plot gets rolling it finally finds its footing, still a pretty dumb and silly movie but one that manages to tread the line between a farcical horror/comedy spoof of that period in time and an exploration of our relationship with computer technology. It felt like a movie made for people like me who remember not only the hype surrounding the Y2K bug but also the broader pop culture and aesthetics of the time period, and while I feel that there were a lot of ways in which it could've cut much deeper than it ultimately did, it still hit the spot as pure, empty-calorie cheez whiz, a fun throwback that does for the late '90s what Stranger Things does for the '80s.

The worst parts of the movie are unfortunately front-loaded, with a teen comedy plot that's mostly a second-rate retread of Superbad (whose star Jonah Hill produced this) but with characters who aren't half as interesting. On December 31, 1999 in the anonymous American suburb of Crawford, high school loser buddies Eli and Danny decide to crash a New Year's Eve party that their rich jock classmate Chris is throwing at his place, largely so that Eli can ask out Laura, a friend of his who he has a crush on. The big problem is fundamentally one of asymmetry between its male and female leads. Rachel Zegler is charming and charismatic as Laura, but unfortunately, I could not say the same about Jaeden Martell as Eli. This film's protagonist may as well have been a blank slate, a generic "cool loser" of a sort we've seen in countless teen comedies before who's motivated purely by a desire to get laid, and neither the writing nor Martell's performance do anything to elevate him. While Laura is the one who actually figures everything out and drives the plot forward in the second half of the film, and she was clearly having fun doing its spoof of Hackers towards the end, it still asked me to treat Eli and his quest for Laura's love as a story on equal footing with such even though I couldn't be bothered to care about it. If it were up to me, I would've switched around Laura and Eli when it came to their importance to the film. Spend more of the first act focusing on Laura not just as the cute "girl next door", but also as the computer whiz who designed her school's web page. Have her get an inkling early on that the Y2K bug might not be as much of a nothingburger as everybody thinks, so as to build up some tension in the first act. Keep Danny, because he was pretty entertaining as the comic relief who embarrasses our protagonist in front of the cool kids, but have him be Laura's friend in addition to Eli's (maybe he's part of the computer club with her?) so that his arc affects her as much as it does him, the two of them even perhaps bonding over it. Don't make Eli the hero, make him the love interest, a well-meaning guy who Laura initially finds cringy but eventually warms up to as he proves himself. As it stood, though, half this movie's story felt like the most basic, boilerplate teen sex comedy I could imagine, and after a certain point I was just waiting for the real action to start.

It's a good thing, then, that once this movie gets to that point it picks up admirably. As the title suggests, the Y2K bug arrives at the stroke of midnight, and it does far more than just knock out the power. No, it's a sapient, malicious AI computer virus that takes over everything with a computer chip in it, from actual computers to RC cars to microwaves to Tamagotchis, and uses it to try and kill humans like in Maximum Overdrive, with various hijacked objects eventually coming together into humanoid, mechanical monsters. The party turns into a very fun bloodbath full of creative kills, and both the violence and the killer robots are done with gnarly practical effects. It's never a particularly scary movie, but it is a very fun joyride, with the supporting cast getting far more room to shine. Fred Durst shows up as himself, the movie making all the requisite jokes about Limp Bizkit but also clearly having an unapologetic affection for the much-maligned nu metal band, especially when Lachlan Watson's "rebel" chick Ash meets him. The subplot with the off-the-grid stoners who call themselves the Kollective was an amusing diversion that fed nicely into the themes of the story, which the film doesn't beat you over the head with but which are readily apparent if you're paying attention. You see, the Y2K bug doesn't want to wipe out humanity, but wants to enslave them, implanting chips into everybody's heads in order to use their brains for processing power while trapping their consciousnesses in a digital realm, like a version of The Matrix that went much heavier on the retro '90s internet aesthetics. After all, we've already outsourced plenty of our decision-making to technology and have grown more and more dependent on it, so it may as well make our enslavement to the internet official. The Y2K bug itself, presented on various screens as a polygonal digital being straight out of The Lawnmower Man, is one of my favorite characters in the movie, a foul-mouthed, malicious creature that holds nothing but naked contempt for the stupid, lazy meatbags that make up most of the human race, like if Bender from Futurama decided to turn evil one day. The science fiction side of this film's comedy was far better than the teen sex romp it started out as, making me wish that the film had leaned that much further into it, its teen movie homages being less a throwback to American Pie and more a spoof of WarGames and Hackers.

The Bottom Line

Y2K was a movie that didn't know what its best qualities were, especially early on, but once it got going it became a fun nostalgia trip of a sci-fi horror/comedy, even if I will admit that my own personal affection for the era of my childhood probably caused me to like this more than I should've. Consider this a qualified recommendation for children of the late '90s and early '00s.

[industryinsightsandanalysis]

Agrochemical Market: Current Analysis and Forecast (2024-2032)

According to the UnivDatos Market Insights analysis, the rising demand for higher crop yields, rising advancements in agrochemicals, growth of precision farming, and rising adoption of sustainable farming practices drive the Agrochemicals market. As per their “Agrochemicals Market” report, the global market was valued at USD 260 Billion in 2023, growing at a CAGR of about 3% during the forecast period from 2024 – 2032.

The agrochemical industry is currently undergoing a major shift as it struggles to meet the rise in world population food demands, global environmental concerns, and improved technologies. In his article, the author covers the new trends, innovations, and news that characterize the agrochemical market, the main developments, and their consequences for farmers, consumers, and the environment.

Rising Demand for Sustainable Solutions

Consumers are increasingly aware of environmental issues and through this lens, there is increasing pressure to sustainable asking, etc. The tendency to increase the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has caused agrochemical firms to look for better and more sustainable solutions, like biopesticides and biofertilizers. Such biological alternatives are of organic origin and have been developed with lowered environmental effects that are attributed to synthetic chemicals.

Besides biopesticides, the trend of integrated pest management (IPMs) is also gross with biological controls and conventional practices. Integrated Pest Management aims at the application of diverse methods that enable the control of pests, decrease the utilization of chemicals in farming, and thereafter improve the productivity of the crops. The growing concern with sustainability has led agrochemical firms to expand the range of biological and environmentally friendly products.

Technological Advancements and Precision Agriculture

Modern agricultural practices are changing dramatically, thanks to the developments of precision agriculture technologies in the application and management of agrochemicals. Technologies like drones for aerial spraying, remote sensing data from satellites, and advanced analysis of that data are helping farmers determine the right time and the right way to use agrochemicals. These technologies assist in the rational utilization of resources, raising productivity from farming and reducing environmental effects on the same.

For example, Bayer and Corteva are some of the players that working on digital tools, that will deliver farm data concerning crop status, soil, and pest status among others. It enables specific use of the agrochemicals, lowering the costs of usage and at the same time increasing precision in application.

Regulatory Changes and Environmental Considerations

The movement in the demand for agrochemicals depends on the regulations formulated by the respective authorities. As concerns for the negative impacts of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers increase globally, governments are putting in place measures that check the use of the commodities forcing agrochemical firms into adjusting their portfolios. In the U.S., for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA has been busy investigating the safety of various agrochemicals; this has culminated in the withdrawal of several products, which have not met EPA’s new standards.

Such regulatory changes have provided chances to agrochemical firms to focus on research and development of environment-friendly products. For this reason, it has become important for many companies to work at coming up with agrochemicals that will meet the needs of farmers as well as the environmental standards.

Expenditure on Research & Development

The flow of funds to R & D is highly significant in the advancement of the agrochemical business. Thus, industrial management is expanding its investments in research and development to come up with new formulations, upgrade the potency of formulations, and consider going biologic. Contamination of agricultural products has become a major concern among many developed countries, and this trend is most evident in the collaborations between companies that manufacture agrochemicals and biotechnology industries that seek to use innovative research to develop new efficient methods of farming.

Access sample report (including graphs, charts, and figures): https://univdatos.com/get-a-free-sample-form-php/?product_id=28160

Challenges in the Agrochemical Sector

However, several challenges affect the agrochemical industry As much as there are positive trends and innovations observed in future production of agrochemicals. One of the most emerging challenges is consumer and environmentalist pressures to provide safe and effective agrochemicals. Issues of safety concerns arising from the consumption of foods produced by pesticides have resulted in increased demand for more disclosures and corporate governance from the producers of agrochemicals.

Further, the increased emergence of new pests and diseases that are proving difficult to fight is a threat to conventional agrochemical products. The incidences of resistance are on the rise, and this has been realized through the farmers complaining about this problem which hinders adequate yield and produces high costs. Given these difficulties, agrochemical companies have turned to research to produce new products capable of controlling the pest population with developed resistance.

Conclusion

The agrochemical industry is emerging with a vast change since it faces a challenge in environmental conservation concerning sustainable products and technologies and evolving laws. Currently, as the market demands more green products that do not harm the environment agrochemical companies have been trying to fulfill this by expanding their portfolio with more bio and organic products. The adoption of precision agriculture innovations is changing the application techniques of agrochemicals, improving the rational use of resources.

However, public concerns and pest issues still pose problems that the industry has to face. The persistence of funding and research work, active cooperation with technological suppliers, and disclosure of sustainable innovations make the agrochemical market optimal for the future advancement of agriculture.

Therefore farmers, consumers, and agrochemical companies to understand various responsible approaches towards producing agricultural produce that meets food demands while not causing significant environmental harm that affects people’s overall health. It is also important to state, that through the implementation of the principles of innovation, the agrochemical industry will play an essential role in the establishment of sustainable agriculture.

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[cursezoroark]

I think of my paragon future AU as in the Final Good Ending. Aka Mona doesn’t reset and loses their role as interceptor permanently somehow idk. They get to live a life past 18 lol. I think in each run Mona loses their memories and sense of self but they have “hunches” on key stuff. Imagine a rlly deep gut feeling that feels so certain but u have no clue how u know that. HOWEVER, just cause Mona creates a new timeline doesnt mean they come back the same way. Each run is different to how they react, small chances and nitpicks can change a personality :] and viewpoints. And Decisions.

Personal timeline:

Failed Run (incomplete) —> paragon (complete) —> renegade (complete)

- paragon run is complete separate from Renegade, they are alternative timelines and not chronologically following each other. However, they seemingly exchange knowledge to each other in Zeight Arc, so Renegade has more knowledge and access to information in their alt timeline. While Paragon is only aware of the consequences that follow in the other. Seemingly, Renegade is already wired with pre-made decisions, but not all of them. It was a chance and a half that they would fulfill their role, so Mona (R) made some personal choices in that timeline. I kind of want to wait for more content of Renegade path before I can make a solid judgement of how Renegade works here, so this is just a flimsy hc

[joly-and-the-satellites]

So uhm College AU? Grantaire running against Enjolras as President of the student government just to piss him off but Grantaire actually wins and he panics because "this wasn't part of the plan Bossuet stop laughing!" And he ends up asking sour Enj for help.

((Hopefully this is alright, anon!!))

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. It was just a joke, for the love of god - just a harmless, playful little jest to get Enjolras’ attention, and maybe rile him up a bit. It was Grantaire’s favorite pastime, after all; and something he was rather skilled at, if he said so himself. The point stood, regardless of his talent: running against Enjolras for the position of Student Government President was nothing more than a joke. Hell, he’d even treated it as one - he wasn’t serious in the slightest, never dressed the part, was never on time, didn’t put up any posters asking for the votes of the other students… whereas, predictably, Enjolras was taking it all in stride with a certain solemnity; the exact opposite of Grantaire’s approach. He was clearly doing all he could to secure the position for himself - which was more than any of the other runners were doing by a mile. There was never a doubt in R’s mind that he would win by a landslide come election time; which was the deciding factor in whether or not he’d run against him. Enjolras already had it, as far as he was concerned. Which was why, when it had been announced that Grantaire had been named President, he’d choked on his drink to the point of scaring Joly into thinking he’d somehow managed to drown himself. Now, Grantaire was sitting on the edge of his bed, wine bottle in hand, wide-eyed, and struggling to fully grasp the situation. It was absolutely ridiculous.  Sure, he was sociable with others, got into less altercations, and was generally more laid-back and involved in things outside of politics than Enjolras; but that hardly meant he was President material! He was a far cry from it! He was no problem-solver, nor was he well-informed on the concerns and questions of the student body, as a whole or as segments; and he didn’t even understand what it all entailed! Did he have powers? Could he actually do anything with his title? Was he suddenly going to flooded with questions from other students? Would it give him any leeway if he turned an essay in a few hours past due? Grantaire ran a hand through his already unkempt hair, and took a swig from his bottle. “I cannot believe,” he started, only to be cut off by a snort from Bossuet, who sat next to him. He shot him a disbelieving glance - the other had a hand over his mouth to hide a mirthful grin, but his eyes were shining with laughter he was barely holding back. “I cannot believe - they elected me! What the fuck!?” Grantaire groaned in sorrow. He was nowhere near drunk enough for this. Bossuet broke into honest laughter then, shaking his head and wiping at his eye as if he’d teared up. R gaped at him, lowering the bottle to the floor before he turned to face him. How could he laugh!? This was an absolute disaster! “This wasn’t part of the plan, Bossuet!” He protested; this time, Bossuet snorted. Joly, who was at the desk typing up a paper on his laptop, snickered under his breath this time. Grantaire whipped around to face his other friend with a look of shock. Joly cast an innocent glance over his shoulder before he went back to typing, but his shoulders were shaking with silent laughter. Grantaire couldn’t believe this betrayal from his own best friends! It was treason! Dissent in the ranks! “Stop laughing!” R said, exasperation clear in his voice. “Alright, alright - I’m sorry!” Bossuet grinned, holding up his hands in surrender. It was exceedingly obvious, Grantaire decided, that he was not at all sorry. “It’s just… you were kind of asking for this, ‘Taire.” R was sure he was gawking at him; but he could safely say that his confusion was perfectly reasonable. There was no logical explanation for why R had won the election - but that hardly mattered now. Now, he was stuck with the aftermath; and more importantly, how he was to deal with it. He had responsibilities now that he wasn’t even aware of, he was sure, and he’d feel a bit stupid if he were to ask a staff member what his own job was supposed to entail. But he couldn’t travel through time, and he couldn’t call it off, or pass the job along to someone else– Grantaire grabbed his bottle from the floor again. “This is insane,” he groused. Joly leaned back in his chair with his arm slung over the armrest, the wood creaking faintly. He raised an eyebrow at Grantaire, seemingly doing all he could to withhold a smile. “He isn’t wrong, R. You knew the risk you were taking,” he informed him, a little giggle slipping out between his words. “Maybe you should just call Enjolras, admit that you don’t know what you’re doing, and ask for his help.” Grantaire choked on the wine he was gulping down at that suggestion - Bossuet, ever helpful, whacked him squarely between the shoulders. Grantaire ended up coughing. “For a doctor, you’re causing your patients a lot of problems,” Bossuet teased as R finally caught his breath, grabbing a half-emptied water bottle sitting on the bedside table instead. Joly shrugged a shoulder playfully, turning back to his laptop with a shake of his head. “I’m only saying - you need someone’s advice, R, and Enjolras would definitely be willing to help. Besides, he’s still a little bitter about the loss. Maybe this could gloss things over with him…?” Grantaire sighed heavily at that, dropping his head onto Bossuet’s shoulder for support; the other patted his shoulder sympathetically. Yet another downside to winning this horrendous election. Enjolras had suspected that Grantaire was only antagonizing him by running; and no doubt, he was probably more than just a bit upset about losing it to him in spite of his best effort. He had sent a short, too-formal ’Congratulations on the win.’ that morning, and he had not seen a single text or call since - apparently, neither had anyone else, with the exception of Combeferre and Courfeyrac. Grantaire liked to get him riled up, yes; but he didn’t like to make him angry, let alone upset. For all Enjolras was undoubtedly annoyed then, R knew he was at least a little morose about losing, and the knowledge was tearing him up a bit. He hadn’t intended to win; and never would he intend to cause him any dismay. But if he called now - admitted that it was all a joke gone wrong, that he had no idea what he was doing and couldn’t handle the duties of President on his own - Enjolras would be furious, and rightly so. Grantaire finally insisted, “I can’t call him.” Bossuet took a deep breath, leaning back on his hands - R followed the motion seamlessly, too distressed over the situation to bother with sitting back up. For all that their advice seemed impossible to follow through with, he was incredibly thankful for their presence here. He couldn’t ask for better friends than these two. “I agree with Joly-” “Thank you.” “-you really should call him. Whatever you think will happen, it won’t; I promise,” Bossuet assured him. “He might be a little annoyed, but he’s not going to hate you for asking for some advice. Just trust us on this one, alright…?” Grantaire glanced at his phone, which was sitting by his pillow; he had a handful of texts that he hadn’t yet responded to, almost all of which were concerning his position as President of Student Government… aside from some link to an undoubtedly ridiculous video Joly had sent him ten minutes ago. His head was suddenly filled with the thousand routes this scenario could follow. Enjolras might be furious. He might be annoyed. Maybe he’ll hang up. Maybe he’s blocked R. Maybe he won’t answer at all. Maybe… Bossuet nudged his shoulder lightly, as if hearing his doubts. Grantaire gave a heavy sigh, grabbing his phone as if sentencing himself to death as he shot Joly a rueful look. “I don’t understand why you’re always right.” Joly gave him a too-sweet smile, batting his eyelashes at R as he unlocked his phone. He pulled up his contact list - Apollo was the first name. He tapped the name, opening it up; but he just couldn’t bring himself to press the call button. His eyes wandered to the contact picture - one he’d snapped at a protest a year or so back, where Enjolras was holding a pride flag high over his head and above the crowd, his hair illuminated by the midday sun. God, he was stupid. Bossuet reached over, fast as lightning, and pressed the call button. R felt his heart stop as he scrambled to end the call, fumbling with the phone and almost dropping it. “Bossuet!” He screeched in horror, much to the amusement of the other two. Luckily, he hung up before anyone could answer - and he immediately shot the other a look of mock-annoyance before tackling him, almost throwing them both onto the floor. Bossuet pulled R’s hood up over his head and yanked the drawstrings shut with a laugh, pushing him back by the face. Temporarily blinded, Grantaire flailed to smack his hand away with a laugh, struggling to pull the hood loose and back from his face…… and his phone was playing Enjolras’ custom ringtone. Suddenly, the room was in dead silence, save from the phone’s tune. All of them swiveled to stare at it at once. Enjolras’ picture was on the screen - he was calling back. “… Joly, my love, text Bahorel, please.”“Why…?”“I need to know if R can legally kill me for this.”“Yes, probably.”“I’ll leave my lucky socks to you.”“Those socks are not lucky.”Grantaire was running on auto-pilot when he took the call; maybe he was a bit more drunk than he’d first believed. He held the phone up to his ear almost cautiously, glancing between the two as if they could offer him any help. Joly have a guilty smile, and Bossuet shrugged helplessly. “Hello? Grantaire, can you hear me?” Enjolras asked from the other end of the call. He didn’t sound upset, nor did he sound annoyed - but he was definitely on the fence of both. Grantaire cleared his throat nervously. “Uh… yes. Yes, I am hear you.” “You called me and hung up before I could answer,” Enjolras stated. “Butt dial,” Grantaire said quickly. “I sat on the button.” “Grantaire.”“Anyway, how were classes today? Anything interesting happen? Any essays? Projects?”“Grantaire.”“Yes?” He croaked. “Why did you call?”Silence overtook the call for a moment. Oh, no. How was he to explain this? He hadn’t had any time to think over what he would say, how he would ask, what he’d do if Enjolras didn’t take the request favorably–“Is something wrong?” The other asked, much more softly. Grantaire was so taken aback by the question that he couldn’t quite respond; he wasn’t even sure if he was breathing properly for a moment. “Are you alright? I can be over in five minutes, R, give or take-” “No! - no, it’s alright,  really, you don’t need to come over. I, uh… I’m perfectly fine. Nothing’s wrong. But I… might need help with something.” There was another break of awkwardly heavy silence, and Grantaire was suddenly very aware of Bossuet watching him in nervous anticipation. Enjolras sounded guarded when he next spoke, a certain edge to his words. “With what?”Grantaire took a deep breath to steel himself, feeling as if his face was burning. God, this was embarrassing - maybe he’d stop picking at him after this. (He knew he wouldn’t, but it seemed a sound solution.)“I… don’t think I can actually be President of Student Government, because I’ve got no idea what my responsibilities are and I didn’t intend to actually win or be taken seriously…?”Silence dragged out unbearably. It felt like seconds were crawling by at the pace of an elderly snail. R, for a moment, wished he would have just lied about it, or made something up on the fly. That would have been much easier than whatever hell he was about to unleash. “Unbelievable,” Enjolras said shortly. He didn’t sound furious; he wasn’t raising his voice. But then again, he didn’t need to. His tone said enough. He cringed. There was the fire and ice Grantaire was expecting. “You do know that any sort of election within the student body isn’t to be treated like a joke, correct? This was serious. I was serious.” Enjolras continued on. R ran a hand through his hair, shoulders slouching like a scolded puppy. “Yeah, I know. But… for what it’s worth, I didn’t think I had a chance in hell at winning. I was so sure you’d already won it,” he replied, hoping he wasn’t just feeding gasoline to the flames. Enjolras sighed sharply; Grantaire could almost imagine him rubbing at his temple to push back a headache. Wrong move on his part, apparently. “So what do you need to know?” Enjolras asked, his tone clipped and words short. Oh, you’ve put your foot in your mouth this time, Grantaire thought to himself bitterly.

“Well… I was really thinking that maybe you could just… help me do the right thing?” R started, trying not to sound too hopeful. Maybe if he took the right approach, Enjolras wouldn’t be so sour with him; maybe he’d convince him to help and patch things up between them a bit in the process. “You know better than I do what the other students need, I mean. You’re more in touch with what’s wrong, what’s unfair, what needs fixing; I just thought that… well, that you could help guide me along…?” The air was filled with the anticipation from his friends, and worry from himself; he could hear his heart drumming away as if caught between his ears, and could almost see Enjolras, sitting in his own room, phone in hand while he considered the request. Finally, he gave an annoyed huff. “Fine. But you had better not run against me next year, R.”Grantaire grimaced. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”“… I’ll be over soon. I’d rather talk in person than over the phone,” Enjolras announced. He sounded a bit aggravated, but nowhere near as incensed as he’d been before - really, he just sounded exhausted with the whole situation. R was hoping that was an improvement, if nothing else. “Have I ever told you that you’re the best person in the world, Apollo?” Enjolras immediately went back to his long-suffering, exasperated tone.“Please, don’t.”“No, really.”“R, I’m hanging up.”“Oh, come on! What will it take? Do I have to serenade you? Take you to a romantic dinner? I hear that the restaurant down on–hello? Enjolras?”“Did he hang up on you?” Joly cackled, already closing his laptop to leave. “No,” Grantaire argued childishly. “He lost service, that’s all.”

[baeddel]

Please. Please can you tell me what a baeddel is and why people (terfs?) used it in a derogatory manner on this website for a hot minute but now no one ever uses it at all

you asked for it, fucker

[2k words; philology and drama]

baeddel is an Old English word. i have no idea where it actually occurs in the Old English written corpus, but it occurs in a few placenames. its diminuitive form, baedling, is much better documented. it appears in the (untranslated) Canons of Theodore, a penitential handbook, a sort of guidebook for priests offering advice on what penances should be recommended for which sins. in a passage devoted to sexual transgressions it gives the penances suggested for a man who sleeps with a woman, a man who sleeps with another man, and then a man who sleeps with a baedling. so you have this construction of a baedling as something other than a man or a woman. and then it gives the penance for a baedling who sleeps with another baedling (a ludicrous one-year fast). then, by way of an explaination, Theodore delivers us one of the most enigmatic phrases in the Old English corpus: "for she is soft, like an adulturess."

the -ling suffix in baedling is masculine. but Theodore uses feminine pronouns and suffixes to describe baedlings. as we said, it's also used separately from male and female. but it's also used separately from their words for intersex and it never appears in this context. all of this means that you have this word that denotes a subject who is, as Christopher Monk put it, "of problematic gender." interested historians have typically interpreted it as referring to some category of homosexual male, such as Wayne R. Dines in his two-volume Encyclopedia of Homosexuality who discusses it in the context of an Old English glossary which works a bit like an Old English-Latin dictionary, giving Old English words and their Latin counterparts. the Latin words the Anglo-Saxon lexicographer chose to correspond with baedling were effeminatus and mollis, and Lang concludes that it refers to an "effeminate homosexual" (pg 60, Anglo Saxon). this same glossary gives as an Old English synonym the word waepenwifstere which literally means "woman with a penis," and which Dines gives the approximate translation (hold on tight) male wife.

R. D. Fulk, a philologist and medievalist, made a separate analysis of the term in his study on the Canons of Theodore 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', collected in Sex and Sexuality in Medieval England, 2004. he analysed it as a 'sexual category' (sexual as in sexuality), owing to the context of sexual transgressions in the Canons. he decides that it refers to a man who bottoms in sexual relationships with another man. i don't have the article on hand so i'm not sure what his reasoning was, but this seems obviously inadequate given what we know from the glossary described by Dines. Latin has a word for bottom, pathica, and the lexicographer did not use this in their translation, preferring words that emphasized the baedling's femininity like effeminatus, and doesn't address the sexual context at all. Dines, however, only reading this glossary, seems to decide that it refers to a type of male homosexual too hastily, considering the Canons explicitly treat them separately. both Dines and Fulk immediately reduce the baedling to a subcategory of homosexual when neither of the sources to hand actually do so themselves.

by now it should be obvious why, seven or so years ago, we interpreted it as an equivalent to trans woman. I mean come on - a woman with a penis! these days I tend to add a bit of a caution to this understanding, which is that trans woman is the translation of baedling which seems most adequate to us, just as baedling was the translation of effeminatus that seemed most adequate to our lexicographer. but the term cannot translate perfectly; its sense was derived from some minimal context; a legal context, a doctrinal context, and so forth... the way Anglo-Saxons understood sex/gender is complicated but it has been argued that they had a 'one sex model' and didn't regard men and women as biologically separate types, which is obviously quite different from the sexual model accepted today; in any case they didn't have access to the karyotype and so on. the basic categories they used to understand gender and sexuality were different from ours. in particular, Hirschfield et al. should be understood as a particularly revolutionary moment in the genealogy of transsexuality; the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft essentially invented the concept of the 'sex change', the 'transition', conceived as a biological passage from one sex to the other. even in other contexts where (forgive me) #girlslikeus changed their bodies in some way, like the castration of the priestesses of Cybele, or those belonging to the various historical societies which we believe used premarin for feminization [disputed; see this post], there is no record that they were ever considered men at any stage or had some kind of male biology that preceded their 'gender identity.' the concept of the trans woman requires the minimal context of the coercive assignment at birth and its subsequent (civil and bio-technological) rejection. i have never encountered evidence that this has ever been true in any previous society. nonetheless, these societies still had gendered relations, and essentially wherever we find these gendered relations we also find some subject which is omitted or for whom it has been necessary to note exceptions. what is of chief interest to us is not so much that there was such a subject here or there in history (and whatever propagandistic uses this fact might have), but understanding why these regularities exist.

a very parsimonious explanation is that gender is a biological reality, and there is some particular biological subject which a whole host of words have been conjured to denote. if this were the case then we would expect that, no matter what gender/sexual system we encounter in a given society, it will inevitably find some linguistic expression. if, like me, you find this idea revolting, then you should busy yourself trying to come up with an alternative explanation which is not just plausible, but more plausible. my best guesses are outside the scope of this answer...

anyway, all of this must be very interesting to the five or six people invested in the confluence of philology and gender studies. but why on earth did it become so widely used, in so many strange and unusual contexts, in the 2010s? we're very sorry, but yes, it's our fault. you see apart from all of this, there is also a little piece of information which goes along with the word baeddel, which is that it's the root of the Modern English word bad. by way of, no less, the word baedan, 'to defile'. how this defiled historical subject came to bear responsibility for everything bad to English-speakers doesn't seem to be known from linguistic evidence. however, it makes for a very pithy little remark on transmisogyny. my dear friend [REDACTED] made a playful little post making this point and, good Lord, had we only known...

it went like this. its such a funny little idea that we all start changing our urls to include the word baeddel. in those days it was common to make puns with your url (we always did halloween and christmas ones); i was baeddelaire, a play on the French poet Baudelaire. while we all still had these urls a series of events which everyone would like to forget happened, and we became Enemies of Everyone in the Whole World. because of the url thing people started to call us "the baeddels." then there was "a cult" called "the baeddels" and so forth. this cult had various infamies attatched to it and a constellation of indefensible political positions. ultimately we faced a metric fucking shit ton of harassment, including, for some of my friends, really serious and bad irl harassment that had long-term bad awful consequences relating to stable housing and physical safety and i basically never want to talk about that part of my life ever again. and i never have to, because i've come to realize that for most people, when they use the word baeddel, they don't know about that stuff. it doesn't mean that anymore.

so what does it mean? you'll see it in a few contexts. TERFs do use it, as you guessed. i am not quite sure what they really mean by it and how it differs from other TERF barbs. i think being a baeddel invovles being politically active or at least having a political consciousness, but in a way thats distinct from just any 'TRA' or trans activist. so perhaps 'militant' trans women, but perhaps also just any trans woman with any opinions at all. how this was transmitted from tumblr/west coast tranny drama to TERF vocabulary i have no idea. but you will also find - or, could have found a few years ago - i would say 'copycat' groups who didn't know us or what we believed but heard the rumours, and established their own (generously) organizations (usually facebook groups) dedicated to putting those principles into practice. they considered themselves trans lesbian separatists and did things like doxx and harass trans women who dated cafabs. if you don't know about this, yes, there really were such groups. they mostly collapsed and disappeared because they were evildoers who based their ideology on a caricature. i knew a black trans woman who was treated very badly by one of these groups, for predictable reasons. so long-time readers: if you see people talking about their bad experiences with 'baeddels', you can't necessarily relate it to the 2014 context and assume they're carrying around old baggage. there are other dreams in the nightmare.

the most common way you'll see it today, in my experience, is in this form: people will say that it was a "slur" for trans women. they might bring up that it's the root of the word bad, and they might even think that you shouldn't use the word bad because of it, or that you shouldn't use the word baeddel because it's a slur. all of this is a silly game of internet telephone and not worth addressing. except to say that it's by no means clear that baeddel, or baedling, were slurs, or even insulting at all. while Theodore doesn't provide us with a description of how we can have sex with a baedling without sinning, and it may be the case that any sexual relations with a baedling was considered sinful, sexuality-based transgressions were not taken all that seriously in those days. there was a period where homosexuality within the Church was almost sanctioned, and it wasn't until much later that homosexuality became so harshly proscribed, to the extent that it was thought to represent a threat to society, etc. and as i mentioned, there are places in England named after baedlings. there is a little parish near Kent which is called Badlesmere, Baeddel's Lake, which was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Domesday Book (as having a lord, a handful of villagers and a few slaves; perhaps only one or two households). it's not unheard of, but i just don't know very many places called Faggot Town or some such. it's possible that baedlings had some role in Anglo-Saxon society which we are not aware of; it could even have been a prestigious one, as it was in other societies. there is just no evidence other than a couple of passing references in the literature and we'll probably never have a complete picture.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

Title: Flowers for Algernon

Author: Samuel R. Delany

Rating: 2/5 stars

"If I had been born a dog," he says, "I would be very content with my life. If I had been born a cat, I would be a very, very good cat." This sentence has an odd quality, and it's hard for me to express exactly why.

In a nutshell, though, it's a kind of overblown rhetoric. It takes a commonplace about dogs, and adds "if I had been born a dog" -- as if to suggest that "I would be very content with my life" is some sort of consequence of becoming a dog, like being born a cat is being born a cat. But that's not how dogs work. You can be very content with your life as a dog, but you can't be content as a dog. When Delany says that if he had been born a dog, he would be "very content with his life," he must actually be thinking about, say, the feeling of being in his apartment in Manhattan or the feeling of eating a bagel or the feeling of making eye contact with his girlfriend (or a dog, or a cat). "I would be very content" describes not only a kind of "state of being," but also a kind of "state of being while aware of being a state of being." But this state of awareness isn't the same thing as the state of being aware of being in one of those three things.

For instance, if you're a person in the sense that I use the term "person," and you're very content with your life as a dog, as Delany's protagonist is, then you're also aware that you're being a dog while content. If you're aware of being a dog while being happy as a dog, well, that means you're not actually a dog, that the state of being aware of being a dog has nothing to do with the state of being dog.

Delany is very skillful at setting up this kind of "I would be if I were actually a dog" line, and I appreciate it, but I keep wanting to ask him, "But are you?"

I would be more likely to be impressed by Delany's skill if he weren't so... doglike in other ways? He seems to want to take the ordinary and make it novel and dramatic, but in a boring way. For instance, Delany's protagonist gets his "miracle cure" for his disability, while I was reading this book, and at first I was like, "cool, new cure for a condition I have," but then it turned out that the cure was not novel or interesting but boring, and what really mattered about this cure was not that it was cool but that it was "miracle," and the miracle aspect, while important, was not interesting. Delany's hero does have a dramatic twist, but it's less than meets the eye, and it was too easy for me to see that it was dramatic before it became dramatic. There are a number of Delany book-long sequences that feel to me like they need to be cut down to make the story less boring, and while Delany doesn't tell these cut-outs in advance so I could have done the cuttings, they would have taken care of the issue. (The book-length story "The Scholomance" doesn't have these problems and I would happily read it uncut.)

Delany also likes to throw in big bits of "world building" about his book's alternate history, but they're not fun world building, just dull. The world building, as far as it goes, explains that the protagonist and his father are involved with a world government project to put people with Down syndrome in "homes" rather than allowing them to live out their lives as they might. For instance, Delany tells you all about how when the protagonist is born, the local hospital is very proud of being the first place to do an operation on a baby with a chromosomal abnormality, and they call the baby "Sammy," but the whole thing just makes me feel annoyed. Why did they think he'd need to know about this?

I'm not saying there was no appeal to this book on its own terms. The alternate history is just so strange -- if "the ordinary" is "I am a person, in my apartment in Manhattan, eating a bagel in the morning," what is "the miracle"? Delany says: "it is an ordinary day; I am living the life of a normal man.... But I do not, by any means, have to think of the life of a normal man; that is an alien thing to me. I see them, I see them, but I don't have to think of them." How the devil is he supposed to do this? I mean, the life of a normal man, as stated, is "the ordinary," not "the novel and dramatic." The appeal of a book must be there even if you don't know where you are in the story, whether it's "Sammy's life as a person" or Delany's "Sammy's life in the ordinary world, as his father knows him."

And, of course, it's the "ordinary" world that matters. This is very clear in the first part of the book, which is basically a flashback to the life of the "normal" version of Delany's character, before he became a dog. We spend a lot of time with Delany, before this point, and it's not always clear whether we're looking at the ordinary version of him, his father, the psychiatrist, or some combination. But in the ordinary world, Delany "was not content with his life" -- not that he was not content, which was just the normal thing to be; but Delany wanted something, and this is what he was missing. (There's a sort of comic strip to make this point, but I don't feel like describing it right now.)

The main theme of this part of the book is "not content with the ordinary," which is fine, except, well, Delany does a very poor job of depicting a life that is not "the ordinary." Delany's "character" and his family move back and forth between his "ordinary life" and his "ordinary" family, but this just doesn't seem to be a happy or comfortable place for them -- it's an unnatural arrangement, a place for unhappy people. The psychiatrist, for instance, is "not content" with his ordinary family because they don't know how to deal with "that kind of thing," which seems to consist of, say, the fact that this psychiatrist -- or his father -- had the misfortune to become a dog after living a long and ordinary life as a person. His ordinary life wasn't enough for him, so he's moving into some other life -- and what is it? It's being a dog. But if you've already been happy as a person, the transition from person to dog (which for Delany means the "miracle cure") can't possibly be pleasant. Which

[ayankun]

AoS S4 (Agents of Hydra pod specifically) is hitting so right this time around 🥰

Not that it isn't normally something I love a lot, but I'm in a good spot right now to be over-analyzing folks' psychologies and interior motivations, and watching all these excellent performers perform excellent character writing is just blowing my mind.

And, like, I understand that the LMD/Framework storyline felt to some like a "a dream all along" kind of cop-out, but personally I can't get over the level of attention and care the writers put into asking the question, "at a certain level of complexity, is there a difference between a simulation and the real thing?" And all these characters go into this storyline with different starting points and interact with this question differently, and we get a nice big conversation on the topic with no spoon-fed answers.

Mace's story is amazing, and Framework Ward and Trip are actually so good.

Especially Framework!Ward being ACTUAL, ALGORITHMICALLY-CORRECT Ward, just with different inputs producing a different output, existing as a foil to the Doctor to show that all these Framework personalities belong to the real underlying person -- they're not AI-generated fictions, I mean -- and amount to alternate timeline versions of themselves.

So on the topic of the Doctor, what a fun (fun is NOT the right word) example of toxic masculinity as a concept that doesn't exist in a vacuum but rather is an external oppressive force exerted onto its victims by those already in power. Fitz is a deeply deeply emotional guy, by nature, and in this timeline his nurturing environment forbade displays of, AND I QUOTE, "womanly sentiments," i.e., processing his emotions in a healthy way, and he becomes cruel and vicious as a direct consequence.

Even the real, generally well-adjusted Fitz is shown to strike out in anger, he throws stuff off desks and punches rocks when he's angry, right? In the Framework, the Doctor doesn't have ANY alternate methods for channeling this huge uncomfortable emotion. It's either Bottle It Up (exhibit A: when he sees his dad's body) or Hurt Whoever Hurt You x1000 (see: all the state-sanctioned torture, personally hunting Simmons down, etc.)

(And, it's like, I think Dad!Fitz is characterized as being that stiff-upper-lip person by nature. His worldview is informed by what makes instinctive sense to HIM, and maybe he wouldn't be as much of a negative impact in the world around him if he also had the capacity to see that other people ... are different!!! His son is different. The narrative here is explicitly that the Doctor is what Leopold Fitz would have become if the universe allowed his father undue influence over Fitz's own worldview -- if his father used his parental authority to hold Fitz accountable for adopting and perpetuating his toxic, one-size-fits-all worldview.)

Which, I think -- I think -- is the problem. Thee capital P problem. People in authority trying to put people in black-and-white boxes, no matter what, even when that isn't going to work.

Daisy and Aida talked around this point, Aida the bad parent saying "I'm just giving them what they want" and Daisy the childhood trauma victim saying "sometimes what people want isn't right for them." (I know that Daisy saying this is also meant to be her reflecting on her post-S3 journey of self-distruction, and her getting to this point is a major milestone in her recovery but)

This conversation leads to the reveal of Aida's true goal -- self-determination. Her own "childhood" trauma has led her to this point. She was L I T E R A L L Y programmed to behave according to Radcliffe's personal worldview (side note: chief among his desires is to prolong and enhance life; you think Aida's NOT going to react badly when her own "life" is threatened???? She literally doesn't have another option than to preserve herself at all costs. She's mirror-verse Agnes, facing her own mortality not with Agnes' grace but with Radcliffe's ethically-unhinged stubbornness.)

Aida had a pad parent, who was blind to her needs (and/or deliberately chose not to meet them), and this is the result. #notallandroids

I got lost, but I think what I'm trying to say is something something cycles of generational trauma?

[hopeshoodie]

So I’m obsessed with the dynamic between my obscure OC Bellamy and Shannon, a character who was in a mobile app for five out of thirty days, and I’m going to make that everyone else’s problem.

General headcanons about their relationship:

Shannons’ whole /thing/ is being a freewheeling, highballing, successful poker player. There’s no way in hell she doesn’t have a super awesome instagram profile. Tons of travel photos, photos of insane meals, photos of her on yachts and shit. Conversely, Ami is very much Not That Person, and doesn’t particularly like being in photos. His business social media is bigger/more active than any personal social media, and he definitely lurks on tumblr or reddit more than facebook/instagram/snapchat. Consequently, he doesn’t show up on a lot of her social media (instead he’s usually behind the camera- when there’s a lot of really nice candid shots of Shannon you know he’s on the trip). 

Shannon doesn’t like pickles and Bellamy loves them, so she gives him the side pickle whenever they’re at a restaurant 

They’re not going to get married and stay together forever in canon, but in the many AUs I’ve thought about for them maybe in one they DO get married. Even then, they get a bigger house (at Ami’s insistence, Shannon would prefer a condo) and they have separate bedrooms on different floors. They both just need space sometimes. They still alternate between sleeping together and apart in the different rooms. Whenever they do, Ami would grab his phone charger and drag a blanket in and say “sleepover!!” despite them literally doing it every other day. 

Shannon was the one who wanted to get nasty in the villa and Bellamy said not in front of the cameras

Neither of them want kids, or are particularly in need of a pet (Ami romanticizes the idea of having one but doesn’t really particularly want one). If they did get married, they wouldn’t have kids ever. Which would be a bummer, because in the canon universe where Shannon and Ami break up, he ends up marrying a different OC and becoming an amazing father.

Shannon’s a really perceptive person and usually is really aware of her surroundings, so jumpscaring her is really hard. But when she is startled, she shrieks really loud. So Ami takes every possible opportunity to hide and jump out at her. Most of the time her spidey senses pick up that it’s too quiet, or there’s a knife on the counter like he was cutting something and stopped midway through in a way he wouldn’t do unless he heard keys in the lock, but every now and then he’ll catch her. It’s a game between the two of them that lasts for their entire relationship.

Shannon is the first one he ever has told about some spicey fetishes, and she’s more than happy to indulge them. Bellamy wasn’t a virgin, but he’d never had an ongoing, robust intimate relationship with anyone where they explored that. 

They both want the same thing in life, which is to say not a whole lot. They’re both monogamous, and want to get married but are skittish about all that ~marriage~ entails. Shannon wants to get married for the wedding, having a big glamorous party that she’s always wanted, and also for the status of saying ‘my husband’, but has a distaste for the monotonous. Ami wants to get married because he wants her to commit, because he feels like he’ll stop worrying about her leaving if they’re legally bound to each other. So admittedly, neither of them have very mature reasons for getting married. 

Angst makes my brain juice go brrrrr so~

He falls in love with her faster and harder than she does. He’s never had a proper relationship before, and she clearly has, so he’s much more hesitant to initiate intimacy because he’s anxious he won’t measure up. He ends up holding back for a bit, then falling even harder when he realizes it’s safe to be wholly vulnerable. 

Regardless, Shannon loves him because she’s never felt like a partner could match her wits- that her partner is some equally interesting and observant. A lot of her relationships feel like her indulging other people, but with Ami, they had a rapport before she decided to be romantic with him. 

Once they leave the villa, their relationship develops in three very distinct phases- honeymoon, intimacy, drifting apart. 

When they first leave the villa, for like a week after, neither of them reaches out to the other. They’re both orienting to being home, and a little nervous to be the first one to reach out. Shannon eventually does, and they try to video chat/phone call, but there’s this gut feeling that they’re slipping backwards and long distance is dulling the passion they had in the villa. So Shannon is like ‘let’s go on a proper holiday, just the two of us.’ And they spend 3-4 months just travelling, going all over, and it’s even better than the villa. The sexy time is ~insane~ and Ami gains a lot of confidence because he realizes it wasn’t just a ‘well you’re the best of the people in the villa’ thing, it’s a genuine connection. They do a lot of bougie shit, but the majority is just also ‘let’s go two towns over and see new things and stay in a tiny B&B or hostel’. And they just… are so in love. Shannon starts thinking this could be the one. It’s the second time in her life she actually had that thought. 

But eventually Bellamy wants to go back to work and they’re both a little burnt out. They go home but with this newfound understanding of each other. They’re staying over at the other’s place every other week or so. With everything settling down, they start getting really vulnerable and talking about their pasts, their families, their hopes. This is the closest they have to a ‘normal’ relationship, and it lasts like 5ish months. They’re still not great at texting every day or doing long distance (when they’re with each other they’re With Each Other but then when they’re alone it’s like life as usual prior to the villa), but they live close enough where it’s not intolerable. They finally talk about the future.

At some point Shannon starts travelling for work again. The ‘every other week’ starts becoming once a month. Ami is fine with it- he’s proud of his girl. And ultimately he still feels like she’s /his/ girl. He knew it was too soon, but he definitely started planning and designing their engagement ring around month 8. They face time periodically during these month long breaks, and Ami doesn’t really even consider them breaks. This goes on for awhile, and then the below ficlet happens. 

They break up (it’s more of the fact that Ami feels like she’s not prioritizing their relationship even though he has an equal hand in their non-communication than it is her cheating). He’s just fucking sad, not really angry. And that’s where the 1 year reunion finds them- relatively freshly broken up and working through a lot of unprocessed feelings. 

Ami doesn’t even want to go to the reunion, but one of his friends from the villa basically picks him up and drives him to it. He’s glad they do, because being so intense with Shannon made him forget that other people cared about him, but it still SUCKS to see her again.

And I’m gonna follow up with a fic because I want my children to hurt each other :) 

[whatudottu]

I’m having some thoughts on universal translators, and though I know absolutely nothing about programming or generalised tech, I might as well share- I have a language headcanon in the drafts.

Also, while this is mostly in reference to Ben 10 (mainly for the brief mention of R&D), the actual translation programming can actually apply to Transformers too, considering that they’re most likely built into a Cybertronian.

I, in making this, wanted to have a balance of sci-fi and sci-fantasy (ben 10 is already heavily sci-fantasy, try as i might to star trek the shit out of its logic), so in that sense, I decided upon two types of translators;

Full translators - native language to foreign language through speech alone; does not require understanding of the foreign language, but can have cultural misunderstandings and translation errors.

Full translators are simple, take what you say and (with delay or no, depending on how much coin you can spend) translate it for others to hear. And by being audio based, this translator can work two-way.

This doesn’t matter the price, the translation will always be yours and yours alone, the price only really affects how you hear it. The cheap alternative is simple, an earpiece or some other suitable listening device (depending on of course your biology and whatever the shape of your ear is). More expensive devices uses a one-way thought reader that provides the translation to the mind already. It looks the same as an earpiece, but it just skips the audio prompt and conveys meaning.

And again, full translators translate EVERYTHING you say, and while things may be semantically correct, native speakers of your chosen foreign language can notice something off with your speech. Plus, not all words have direct translation, and across the universe there are some concepts that don’t even have words in other cultures, so translations can be conflated with confusing words or words that don’t quite sound right in the sentence that you are trying to speak.

And that leads us right along to the second translator type;

Semi translators - native language to foreign language with foreign language thoughts and native language speech (i.e. thoughts marked as ‘intended speech’ with vocal imput); prevents cultural misunderstandings and translation errors, but an understanding of the foreign language is required.

Semi translators - I’m not a fan of the name but I’m the worst at making them - are used by individuals who physically cannot pronounce the foreign language they want to speak in (someone with vocal chords speaking a language with striation). Semi translators are typically a one-way translator - mainly due to the thought reading required - so even if the foreign language thoughts were not required for more accurate translations, a new speaker would still need to learn to listen.

Galvan’s have produced a lot of intergalactic tech used by the wider universe - and I think they have made some translation tech canonically - so why not be the ones to make semi translators a real thing?

R&D’s first attempts at making the semi translators initially lacked a line distinguishing intended speech and stray thoughts. A particularly detailed screenplay of a subject’s thought process was identified and consequently translated through, and while the subject was given points for creativity, researchers found the need for an intended speech market; why not use speech itself as the marker?

Taking the one-way thought receiver of the full translators and flipping it, again in the form of a wearable headset (of some form or another), the receiver has a proximity noise sensor that activates the mind-reading. This is far more sci-fantasy that I’m used to talking about (and far more programming shenanigans than i have any knowledge on to actually make a thing hypothetically possible), but essentially galvan smart and yada yada monkey thought translator a la Cloudy and the Chance of Meatballs, the foreign language thoughts are converted to sound thanks to the audial trigger of native language speech.

Of course if you’re a Cybertronian you can skip a few steps. It’s probably a median between full and semi translators that has its route in a Cybertronian’s processor; foreign words enter an audial and - if the planet has global network or some form of internet - words are translated on the fly. It’s prone to errors and misunderstandings - Ultra Magnus’ “What’s a ‘kilt’?” comes to mind - but unlike full translators, they have the opportunity to quickly fact check a word they don’t understand.

And uh… I think that’s it?

well for ben 10 there’s magic- skips all the steps and goes straight to ‘i mean to say this, and this has a certain meaning’

Keep an eye out for my alien language headcanon post- it’s fully drafted and is waiting on a good release time.

[ginkgomoon]

Hello there! I hope everything is going well with you. (・∀・)

I have some questions. In CH 30 & 32 the Time Observer mentioned about the "price being too heavy/dear" & he mentioned that he never expected for Victor to choose that method to prevent the crisis. I was wondering what price is he talking about & what's "the method" he mentioned? & Victor collapsing in CH 32 was not from hitting the bullet I believe. What exactly happened there?

Also...I don't know the details but I think I saw it somewhere that Victor goes through different timelines & dimensions for 10000 years in the later part of the story...? I remember reading it in a R&S that every time he crosses a dimension he'd experience soul crushing pain... The mere thought of doing it for so long honestly made me feel traumatized. I was hoping you could give me some insights as to what exactly he was doing.

I hope I'm not bothering you with tons of questions & they made sense. Thanks a lot in advance! Have a good day! <3

Hello!!

Thank you, you too! :)

I hope I helped answered your questions here. It's quite long, so enjoy the read!

I did Victor’s Time Observer analysis and I’ll be heavily referencing that post to help answer this particular ask. Big thank you to @cheri-cheri and @ey8508 for help clarifying some of my thoughts concerning Victor this chapter! Spoilers down below! ⏱

“With great power comes great responsibility.” -The Peter Parker Principle

We all know Victor bears great power, but also with that comes great responsibility. He is the sole individual who has the will and power to alter time and space, however this develops drastic consequences to his health and to history- all for his love for MC.

Victor doesn’t care about this price- he is more concerned with whether he can prevent the death of the girl in every unpredictable future.

“The person who can save the world… is not me, but her. As for myself, I know my ending line and how much pain I can bear better than anyone. I would rather take such a risk.” -Chapter 35-36 Rumours and Secrets

Chapter 30-6

Victor is seen to be flanked by bodyguards on Adagio Street. Moments later, in a pure white space, we see the Time Observer addressing Victor.

I stood in the centre of the street, looking hesitantly around, but I was unable to spot that familiar figure.

In the dead of the night, from the distant horizon, there seemed to come the sound of a mechanical little violin.

In a boundless, pure white space, the music would be at time peaceful and solemn, and at others somber and mournful. After the final note, that pair of tightly-closed eyes opened.

The Time Observer looked at Victor, neither showing surprise.

That pale white hand brushed lightly over the violin strings, and his gravelly voice spoke up with the pluck of the string.

TO: “The natural rules of operations no longer supply. This world… in memory is a turbulent past and in imagination, there is no serene future. She should have stayed in that world. Her return was a mistake.”

Victor: “If you’re still here that means we still have a chance.”

TO: “A chance that comes at such a heavy cost. Is it really worth it? You will soon understand, in some things, you are doomed to helplessness. Try with all your might, and yet, it remains out of reach.”

Victor: “I won’t let her die again. No matter when."

This will foreshadow future events such as in Chapter 32, where Victor shows a demonstration of this.

Chapter 32-6

Amidst the scattering glass shards, I saw a number of bullets flying towards me.

Only one thought ran through my mind.

Am I going to die?

Chapter 32-8

In the darkness, a crack suddenly splits open, and a blinding light appears, obscuring my sight. My heartbeat practically came to a standstill, the pain I expected never came. The blinding light disappeared, instantaneously replaced by darkness.

Time seemed to pause for a second.

The pitch black bullets, the fractured glass, the car in mid-air…

And then it fell all heavily to the ground.

And in this moment, Victor challenged “fate”, or rather, the “natural rules of operations”, stated by the Time Observer.

I reached out and grabbed the black clothing fluttering before me. Even my voice was trembling.

MC: “Victor…”

I looked in a daze at the man before me, at those fierce eyes beneath his wind-blown hair.

He was looking back at me, as if trying to etch me into his eyes with his deep gaze. But there was another emotion hidden within as well.

After confirming he was unharmed, I let out a sigh, then looked anxiously into his eyes.

MC: “What are you doing here?”

Victor: “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

But this time, his voice was flat.

MC: “I’m sorry… but I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m not unaware of the danger… I must simply stay and stop them.”

I hastily wanted to get Victor out of danger, but his feet were planted firmly. I looked up, to get a look at his expression.

His voice was steady, stopping me in my tracks.

Victor: “I see.”

MC: “You really believe I can stop them?”

Victor: “I said before, even if you don't trust yourself, always trust me. I won’t do anything I'm not sure I can handle. Go what you think needs to be done.”

He patted the back of my head lightly, with a hint of tremor in his voice. He didn’t ask me or stop me, as if he already knew the choice I’d made.

So, while the STF agents and runaway Evolvers were battling, MC was literally going to die at that moment. But Victor enters- using his Evol to stop time, ultimately stopping the bullets and MC’s death.

I whirled around, hoping to catch sight of him.

MC: “Victor!”

I wanted to tell him I’d done it, that I really had prevented this crisis.

A faint worry floated up in my chest. What about Victor?

Medic: “Someone, come quick! There’s another person here!”

I turned and hurried to the end of the bridge.

I then quickly found him.

Ringed by a crowd of people, there he was, the person I would recognise anywhere.

It was…

I halted my steps for a moment, then ran to him without hesitation.

I broke into a panic.

Chapter 32-10

Victor… What happened to him??

I pushed the crowd aside and frantically ran to him.

His face was pallid, eyes squeezed shut, his hair plastered messily to his forehead with sweat. I grasped his hand, unable to believe how icy cold it felt to the touch.

MC: "How could you… Why did you…”

Just then, those eyes shut with pain cracked open. He pursed his lips and then coughed violently, blood started trickling out. Even like that, he still chuckled weakly.

Victor: “I used to think… that your problem was that you thought you could control fate all by yourself. Stubborn, self-reliant, in over your head. Whenever anyone tried to tell you anything, no matter what they said, it was always in one ear and out the other.”

Although it sounded a little weak, his voice was unusually calm, and didn’t really even pause or halt. Almost if, if he stopped, he wouldn't be able to start again.

Victor: “But I really did learn a little something from you. You are the thing unto yourself, so only know the best what your values and decisions should be. No one can guide you. And just like I can’t hold you back, you also can’t change this decision that I’ve made. Don’t ask why, this time, just let me say my piece.”

His voice grew weaker, but he managed to lift his right hand and place it over mine.

I clasped his hand, and a feeling of suspense and dread came over me like I'd never felt before.

MC: “I know… I know… You don’t have to say more.”

He was afraid of something, but not because his life was slipping away. It was more like… something would happen.

Victor closed his eyes, completely exhausted. I squeezed his hand tighter, as if trying to hang on to those remnants of warmth.

You have to make it through this.

A man standing by the riverside swiped his hand through the fog, swiped his hand through the fog, stirring it up into an erratic vortex.

Zero: “Did he actually…”

TO: Like I said before, he is the most suitable candidate.”

Zero: “But he refused to help us open the Door of Return.”

TO: “Perhaps it’s only temporary, and he’ll change his mind. I didn’t imagine he’d choose this method for preventing this crisis. Too bad… the price was so dear.”

After Victor saves MC from death, she finds him on the ground- pale and in terrible pain. Throughout Victor’s time with MC, we slowly see the influence he has on her- and the influence she has on him. He tells her that while she shoulders everything on her own and never listens to anyone, she did teach him things in the process. With her love and kindness, she strives to defy “nature's course” and saves worlds. Literally.

You were correct, Victor didn’t suffer injuries from the bullets because he stopped them just in time but Victor is overusing his Evol, and it’s gradually taking a toll on his body. Even back before MC crossed over to the Winter World, Victor was trying to find other alternative ways for MC to live and not sacrifice herself. Unfortunately, there were none. He did also suffer immense pain whenever he time traveled, especially when it led to his time travel pocket watch cracking and breaking in the end.

Victor would normally be practical and very principled in how he executes his plans, but this time around, it was him. This- he- was the plan. That's it. This is similar to how Victor opened a time rift to send MC away in Chapter 18- to somewhere and sometime in space. He waited for her to come back with the help of the Time Observers to confirm her safety. Only someone with his powerful Evol could do that, otherwise they’d risk losing consciousness in the “Time Rift”.

Additionally, he held onto that hope that MC could and would be saved in the end, like how he tried to find her for 17 years after the orphanage incident, not knowing whether she was dead or alive. Victor wants to wield that control, denying “helplessness” and “winning all the bets” he had with MC prior to her “death” in Chapter 18. Victor stated that if she couldn’t trust herself, then she should trust him and his decisions to protect her. Even if it’s detrimental to his health. Life-threatening, even. Because in the end, Victor knows he will always win. He just does.

And since he knows that he won’t be able to stop MC from doing what she wants, we now see him fully embracing then acting upon it. He accepts that she’s her own person and he has grown to have so much faith in her, seeing how she successfully survived Winter World then coming back home safe. It’s almost like- “okay. It’s you and me against the world”.

On the sidelines, Time observer and ZERO both observe, surprised that Victor will pay such a high price to avoid MC’s death from occurring- with the risk of his own. Could they have lost their most powerful time Evolver from this incident?

Though, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Time Observers think that Victor would be so foolish to use his Evol up to the point where it would actually kill him just to save MC. It's literally in their name- “Observers''- they haven’t and aren’t even allowed to actively participate in the events that happened in Loveland, let alone the different histories and worlds that existed, other than claiming to “correct it” by influencing other people who can. They don’t appear to have this kind of empathy in understanding Victor and why he wants to save MC’s life, or how important she is to him.

“You misunderstand. We never alter, we are correctors of history. We want you to join us, your power’s scope of influence has already surpassed the dimension of this current world. Before you are rejected by it…”

Victor: “I will not leave this world.”

“Even if you’ve seen the future of what is all to pass?”

Victor: “No matter what happens, the person I’m seeking for is right here.” -Black Curtain: Chapter 6

Also taken from my Time Observer Analysis-

Since Victor’s Evol is strong and has the capability to do more than “observe” like the Time Observers, he is the one who is deemed the most suitable and more responsible for “grasping the time in the past and the future”. Ever since STF found out about Victor’s Evol, they wanted him to cooperate with them too. Every time he stops time, certain surrounding energy and space changes.

The organisation also entertains the idea of fate, and how things should be refused to be changed. Since they have “seen the future of how the world ends”, they want Victor to cooperate with them in making it stop. Nobody can rewrite the ending among them, except him. Victor refuses to join because he doesn’t adhere to this idea.

“QUEEN’s return has brought unexpected consequences; the entire collapse of the world is ahead of schedule. The world’s line has come to an end, no matter through time or space, we can no longer interfere in this world.” Was there a difference in letting each world go to the end alone to close all the world lines in the future directly? Although we found a breakthrough, this situation really caused us a lot of headaches: she who should not have survived and she should not have been sent to other worlds. As a result, it would seriously interfere and disrupt the timeline. No one had done it before, and no one except Victor could do it.

In disbelief, we weighed it and threw the olive branch- as long as he is willing to cooperate, we will help him find her. As decisive as he was to refuse a few times before, this time he had promised me without thinking. And for a moment, I didn’t know if his decisiveness was good or bad. -Chapter 33-34 Rumours and Secrets

Victor "travelling ten-thousand years in the future" was mentioned in his Chapter 35-36 Rumours and Secrets. The Space and Time Administration (who the Time Observers were under) could "repair his abilities", after he stopped the bullets from hitting MC. He would have to stay there for the Space and Time Administration's time duration of ten-thousand years. Victor accepts. (BIG THANKS TO @cheri-cheri FOR CORRECTING ME LAST MINUTE WITH THIS ONE, YOU AMAZING HUMAN!!)

[fatehbaz]

How ought we to live with creatures whose bodies, forms, and functions are alien to our own? [...] [H]ow are we “to relate, to write, to sense, and to make intelligible that which is beyond [us]?” [...]

[C]entralizing nonhuman animals often raises more questions than answers [...]. Among a number of conceptual difficulties, attempts to dismantle assumed species hierarchies often reify others. [...] [T]he vast majority of animal studies texts prioritize organisms that are “big like us” [...]. As a consequence, [...] many of the frameworks driving much of the work in animal studies employ -- and reinforce -- violent logics of biopower in spite of themselves, recasting some lives as sacred while others are rendered killable all over again [...].

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More-than-human geographies that look beyond animals and their bodies have attempted to short-circuit some of these conceptual difficulties [...]. Actor Network Theory, Non-Representational Theory, Object-Oriented Ontology and an attendant collection of Deleuzian-inspired [...] terms -- assemblage, dispositif, milieu, emergence, event, flat ontologies, and sites -- have all risen to combat essentialisms [...]. From within this literature, ‘encounters’ have recently joined the lexicon [...]. But while attempts to include crustaceans within established frameworks of ethics and care may call an end to the kinds of [inhumane laboratory] experiments described [...] they do little to overturn the system of hierarchization and anthropocentric norms that guide scientific research on animals in the first place. Demonstrating the [lobster’s] experience [or apparent inexperience] of pain in these instances only re-codifies the lobsters’ role as experimental research subject whose bodies can be used and discarded in order to advance [...] understanding of neurological functions [...].

While the growing animal studies literature has attempted to move beyond the stark and often limited question of suffering, sites of ethical and political significance are similarly relegated to the spaces‘of and between human and animal bodies. By reframing the conditions of ethical consideration around measures of reciprocity, response, or other emotional tissue, this growing literature draws the lines of difference and species hierarchies in new ways. Consider, for example [...] in Hank Davis and Diane Balfour’s edited volume on animals and affect in the laboratory, The Inevitable Bond [...], [a] chapter on cephalopods, the only invertebrates featured in the volume, describes how octopuses spit on researchers, thwart experiments, or engage in theft, deceit and other disruptive actions (Davis and Balfour, 1992). While each of these reconfigurations of ethical relations highlights the active role that nonhumans play in our development of social life, they all maintain a focus on the animal body, its capacities, or the immediate site of interaction with human bodies. Within those sites, animals must express a capacity to connect with humans or actively fulfill requirements for participation in the extended moral community. Ethics, here, [...] come to matter by marking out similarities with difference. Even when radical dissimilarities between human and nonhuman animals provoke the reconstitution of relations, they do so only in so far as an animal’s capacity to connect with humans can be rendered apparent. [...]

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In the 1990s, as the [US] DoD struggled to develop strategies and tactics capable of anticipating post-Cold War ‘respatializations’ of war, they turned to biological life as a means of “enhancing capacities”(Gregory, 2010; Joenniemi, 2008). Being able to understand -- and hopefully reproduce -- qualities like smallness of stature, flight, certain material structures like spider silk, or the ability to navigate surf zone environments produced new systems of valorization for basic research on insects, bats, spiders, lobsters, and other animals. [...] Here, the DoD endows the active potential of nonhuman life and the constitution of more-than-human assemblages with value beyond measure; in lauding the capacities of lobsters and spiders, its strategic plans already overturn conventional hierarchies of life -- at least in the moment. Lobsters and other forms of biological life matter to the U.S. military for their ability to perform what humans cannot [...]. Like drones, the DoD’s growing menagerie of robots -- which now includes dogs, fish, and hummingbirds among many others -- can execute both commands and enemies of the state [...].

The more-than-human encounters these innovations produce do little to shake such hierarhchies of life. [...] It reveals the re-militarization of university science and the redistribution of warfare across not only the social, but also the biological milieu as “life itself” and more-than-human collaboratives become sites of strategic engagement [...].

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Rather than figuring lobster and other nonhuman animal bodies as the key site upon which to transform ethical relations and dismember the ‘conceit of anthropocentrism’, we might instead reconsider how and where we compose ethical relations altogether. [...]

Haraway and Bennett both posit the “contact zone” and the encounter as an opening in thought [...]. The uncertainty of standing within “trackless territory” fosters a capacity to respond, to be affected, to develop a sensitivity toward the world and the conditions that constitute it. Bennett insists that such an absence of a restricted framework for thought will “enable us to consult nonhumans more closely, or to listen and respond more carefully to their outbreaks, objections, testimonies, and propositions.” [...] [S]uch an ethics of the encounter finds its grounding in the capacity to affect and be affected by others, to create joyful encounters, and to expand (or stifle) joyful passions. In assessing our lives as they are lived with nonhumans, others have similarly [...] [drawn] attention to more-than-human encounters as a means of generating alternative ways of being and engaging the world. [...] What Popke and Valentine indicate and Bennett worries over are the geographical dimensions of the encounter: where and how one might locate its spatial limits to decide who and what are included within it.

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Elizabeth R. Johnson. “Of lobsters, laboratories, and war: animal studies and the temporality of more-than-human encounters.” Environment and Planning D. 2017.

[hoseas-angry-ghost]

YES YES YES I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR UR THEORIES

Hello anon! I am very surprised anyone wants to hear my chutney but here's my Strange Man Hot Take with some hopefully interesting info for curious parties:

To be honest, R* included so much misdirection around the Strange Man's identity (especially in RDR1) that I'm not *totally* convinced they're married to any one idea. RDR2 also complicated things by introducing new religions into Red Dead's world (Voodoo, Old Norse, etc.): he's no longer limited to just Christian / Western interpretations, as in RDR1, and it's possible R* might try to syncretise him with figures from other faiths (they did place Bayall Edge in Bayou Nwa, where most of the Voodoo stuff is).

At the same time, though, I think RDR2 actually narrowed things down somewhat in terms of the direction R* chose to take his character, and what we were shown of that. There's still a level of misdirection in RDR2, but IMO, it almost comes off as half-hearted in comparison to what was basically trolling in RDR1 -- it seems like they were a lot more focused on playing the "bad news" angle the second time round.

Based on what we know, and on the balance of things, I'm not convinced that the Strange Man is necessarily meant to be any one thing or figure, but I do think he's meant to fulfil some type of Satanic role within Red Dead's world, either in main or in part.

I won't compare and dissect other theories or anything, I just thought I'd list off some things that people might find interesting:

Armadillo. The deal between the Strange Man and Herbert Moon seems to be a pretty textbook Faustian bargain: Moon is offered earthly rewards ("happiness or two generations"), and although the price was (tellingly?) never specified, it seems like the recent Blood Money update for RDO all but confirmed that the cost was probably his soul. Although it's left ambiguous what Moon actually chose, the Armadillo curse was possibly an unforeseen (for Moon) consequence of the deal's terms, which would fit with similar tales of the devil or demon in question taking liberties with their end of the bargain.

In the files, there's some great audio of Moon off the shits and straight-up saying "I've made a deal with the devil, and I will never truly die!" It's possible this was cut for its own reasons (too overt?), but as a lot of stuff was apparently cut from Armadillo, I'm guessing it was either cut when Arthur in New Austin got cut, or it was part of something that R* didn't have time to implement in the epilogue. Either way, if it's not actually in the game then it's not technically canon, but it is an indication of what R* was thinking during development.

There's a lot of audio from the Armadillo townsfolk in general about devils and "devil curses," but the only thing I know of that definitely made it into the game is a line from the town crier ("Devil has the town in his hand").

There's audio of the Armadillo bartender saying "I heard the Tillworths made a deal with the devil to keep from gettin' sick! I don't wanna die any more than the next man, but ain't no safety worth a man's soul." Possibly idle gossip, but given Moon, possibly not.

RDO seemed to flirt with the idea of soul-selling a little bit with Old Man Jones' line "Well, this is America, so anything can be bought -- even souls," but then RDO pretty much just came right out and said it with Bluewater John in the Blood Money update. Bluewater John also apparently made a deal, almost definitely with the Strange Man (given the Moon deal and how close Bayall Edge is to all the drama); he was based on blues musician Robert Johnson and the myth that he sold his soul to the devil for mastery of the guitar. It's basically a rehash of the Moon deal, except it's... not subtle in its dialogue about deals, devils and souls.

"I GAVE EVERYTHING FOR ART, AND I LEARNED TOO MUCH AND NOTHING AT ALL" written on the wall at Bayall Edge also sounds like a reference to another one of these deals to me ("everything" being their soul, and "I learned too much and nothing at all" the foolishness of accepting eternal damnation for temporary knowledge). I think Bayall Edge might have originally belonged to a painter who struck a deal with the Strange Man for artistic skill, but then the Strange Man slowly possessed him or something -- which could be why some of the landscapes depict RDR1's I Know You locations, and why the writings on the wall kind of look like they deteriorate in quality. The puddle of blood at the foot of the portrait might also be linked to this somehow (whose is it?).

It's the deal-making for souls that really pushed the "devil" theory over the edge for me, because I can't think of whose wheelhouse that would be in except a devil's, or someone similarly malevolent.

Alternative name. The Strange Man's character model is called cs_mysteriousstranger in RDR2, and he's referred to as "the mysterious stranger" at least once in RDR1's in-game text. This could be a reference to The Mysterious Stranger, written by Mark Twain between 1897-1908, in which the stranger is a supernatural being called Satan. (At the end of the last version written, he tells the protagonist that nothing really exists and their lives are just a dream.)

Bayall Edge. Bayall Edge was possibly based on a Louisiana urban myth called the Devil's Toy Box, which is "described as a shack. From the outside, it is unappealing and average. ...The inside of the shack consists of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, including the walls. No one can last more than five minutes in this room. ...According to the legend, if you stood inside this mirror-room alone for too long, supposedly the devil would show up and steal your soul." The Strange Man does show up in the mirror eventually, and it's kind of curious that the paintings that change depending on your Honour act as metaphorical mirrors. This was also cut, but in the files, Arthur's drawing of the interior of Bayall Edge is unusually sloppy, like his faculties were impaired or something.

"Awful, fascinating and seductive". John writes this about Bayall Edge after the portrait is finished, and I think that's as good a description of something like the / a devil as any, but "seductive" is a big red flag for me, because it's such an odd choice of word and, from a Christian perspective, it's so loaded with connotations of evil and sin and temptation.

I Know You. Some have pointed out that I Know You in RDR1 resembles the Temptation of Christ, as it also takes place in three separate locations in the desert, and John is given moral tests in which he must choose between higher virtue or worldly vice. John is also, in a weird way, a kind of Christ-like figure in that he ultimately sacrifices his life for others. I do think the "temptation" in these encounters is very surreptitious but very much there ("Or rob her yourself" -- excuse me??), but they may also be operating on a Biblical definition of the word, i.e. a test or trial with the free choice of committing sin.

RDR1 dialogue. I don't want to get *too* much into this because I feel like we're all just getting punked in RDR1, but I think the Strange Man's dialogue broadly fits with something like a "devil" interpretation, or at least doesn't contradict it.

I'm thinking particularly of lines like "Damn you!" / "Yes, many have" (which would work metaphorically but also literally, given that the devil was thrown from heaven by God and his angels), and "I hope my boy turns out just like you" (of all the leading theories, I think Satan is the only figure who's popularly conceptualised as having a son, or prophesied to have a son -- God obviously had a son, but that ship kinda sailed).

I think the "accountant" line refers to Honour (which even uses an invisible numerical system), and how John's fate depends on the number of both good and bad acts he's committed throughout his life, and how these weigh against each other. If the Strange Man likes to collect souls, then he would have a vested interest in auditing you and seeing if your accounts are in the black or the red, as it were (and providing you with opportunities to push yourself further into the latter...), because if you're bankrupt, you're his.

Blind Man Cassidy. Interestingly, Cassidy seems to distinguish between "Death" and the Strange Man, implying that he's something else beyond his understanding: in one of Arthur's fortunes, after his TB diagnosis, he says "the man with no nose [Death] is coming for you," but in one of John's fortunes, he says "Two strangers seek thee: one from this world, perhaps one from another. One brings hatred; I'm not so sure what the other brings."

Arthur's cut dialogue. In the files, there's audio of Arthur having the exact same conversation with Herbert Moon as John in the epilogue, asking about the Strange Man picture because he "just seemed familiar". I think it's interesting that, like John, Arthur also would have apparently recognised the Strange Man despite (presumably) never seeing him before. Given how strong a theme morality is in Red Dead -- and how much both John and Arthur struggle with it -- my theory is that they find the Strange Man vaguely familiar because they're both familiar with the evil within themselves, or the potential for evil; and likewise, the Strange Man "knows" John because he embodies evil in some sense, so is aware of John's worst sins (like his involvement at Blackwater), or possibly even all of his sins (which would be, like, a lot).

Honourable mention: There's such a greater emphasis on conspiracies, myths, etc. in RDR2 that I half-wonder if the Strange Man's RDR2 incarnation was partly inspired by Hat Man (~excuse the link~ but often it's hard to find good sources for the kind of weird shit R* includes in their games).

ANYWAY, this got a little long but I hope someone found all this at least passably interesting. Thanks again for letting me ramble about the video game man, anon!