#and i remembered i translated something as arbiter of authority

[devilofthehounds]

[image id: An image from God Eater 3 depicting a memory of a young Keith Pennywort, Din Pennywort, and Oulu Pennywort. Din is a young boy with short, spiky hair that sticks out all over the place. Oulu is a young boy with longer hair that goes to his chin and bangs that completely cover his eyes. /end id]

Okay, I was playing through Keith's Traversing the Past and took a minute to properly look at the pictures, and maybe I'm late to the party on this, but...

It's Din and Oulu! They have actual designs! And they're so much tinier than I realized! I thought they were a few years older than Hugo and co., but they're positively tiny!

I almost wonder if I should re-read my translations and see if I need to adjust some dialogue. And maybe take a second look at the physical descriptions because Oulu's hair is shorter than what I thought it'd be.

God, I want more of these two. And pre-main story content in general. It's a crime that so much lore is exclusive to five online character novels. I know we're all waiting for God Eater 4, but I want a GE3 prequel anime, dammit!

[the-takosader]

So, to get myself started, might as well send some of the stuff I've made, with a few of my own insights. A sort of "director's commentary" type of thing.

Here we have our first image, which is also the banner for this blog.

If you're wondering what it is, either I'm someone who likes too much '60s and '70s rock, or you're just uncultured. It's Abbey Road, if you couldn't tell. (Side fact: there is also a hex colour (#A79F92) named Abbey Road. Doesn't look like the asphalt on the original album cover, though.)

This is also the area where I should probably mention something: I have Splatoon OCs! This image doesn't show all of them, mainly because I wanted accuracy to the original album cover. Some of this builds into lore that I've had floating in my brain for about 3 months now (Oldest OC by creation dates is 1yr 3mo), but that's not especially important.

So, who's who? On the far right, we have Hachi, in the position of John. Behind her is Mendouna, taking up stock in Ringo's position. Trailing behind, without his normal footwear, is my main OC, Kara, who is filling in Paul's position, rather nicely. And finally, guarding the rear, is Jishin, standing in George's position.

Now, aside from their names being Japanese (colour, confidence, troublesome and Eight, going in order of creation), these four are the first OCs I've properly made, and for the most part, they fill canon roles...

Except for Kara. He's the author avatar for this story. Or, more accurately, stories. I have something of the order of... 8 or 9 months' worth of lore, dating back to January 23rd, 2022. Of course, my earliest archive of it goes back to February 26th, 2022, because I accumulated it into what I call "gigaposts". It's just summaries.

Anyway, who fills in what role? We know Kara's the author avatar, but what about everyone else? Jishin is Agent 3, or for everyone who's played Splatoon 3, Captain 3. Mendouna is Agent 4, and Hachi is Agent 8. There's 2 others, but I'll leave them out of the discussion for now. As it stands, there's a) no art of one, and b) no lore of the other.

Important thing to note: I hate the overpowered character idea as much as the people who will probably read this, so I've done it clean and simple, as a rule for myself: no OP characters. Each character can have a talent, but no OP stuff should even look like it's appearing. Bad shit happens when you do OP characters, such as your story getting boring.

Why's that important to note? Because "author avatar" usually translates to "golden child" as I've seen it. Which is why I've done a different angle for Kara. But, obviously, you'd have to read the lore.

Remember above when I mentioned that Kara was the main OC? Yeah, I meant it. I use him for "crossover" arts, mainly, but he is, as it stands, my main OC. This is him being chased by a horde of Giga Monty, and this...

...is him on First World Bank. These 2 arts were made before Splatoon 3's models dropped, just in case you're wondering why there's a sharp decline in quality between the Abbey Road art and these two.

Another important thing to address, in relevance to the above: I use GMod for art. I also can't do art for things that lack GMod-ported models because that's not how GMod works. I have made art to request before, but that's mainly been for friends who also have Splatoon OCs. I also have to choose what map I use. Again, the Steam Workshop for GMod is the final arbiter for what I use. I can't use what doesn't exist.

[quidfree]

for the r&j discourse... actually the main topic was about chatgpt is currently available in my country and someone made a post to discuss whether ai would rule the world (and concluded its not gonna be that dramatic like people imagine after he teaching chatgpt chess and asking it questions about moral dilemma). the most possible scenario is that ai will be people's mental counselor (or even the one can give advice on/effect our life choices, our morality), and specifically it will replace book/film reviewers cause chatgpt is excellent at these. and that said person made a joke about if those reviewers dont want to be replaced, they should write something that ai would 'despise' writing about; and then he gave an screenshot that he sent chatgpt a message like:

b

so i was just being nosy or whatever about that line "Shakespeare wrote r&j just to criticize love because he thought it's stupid" and thought i could ask you (admittedly i have never read r&j even it got stranlated into my mother tongue 'cause i think it wouldn't be the same when i can read it in its language and still need some motivation for shakespere's works is ...hard lol)

in the discourse, he even noted that current world with ai will be likelier a dystopia in 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley than the one in '1984' by 'George Owell' (which i must also admit i don't have a clue, but asking you once again to give thoughts lol)

it was so random and a lot, i know, and you always have been so kind and generous, no need to burdern yourself with this, just delete this without any qualms if this is too much

thank you ^^

interesting..... i was not expecting this to be the direction that query went in lol.

i find the whole chatgpt/ai = future moral arbiter argument so odd. it's an appeal to objective morality that i don't understand bc i don't believe that exists. humans shape morals and humans make ai. like at the end of the day when we see 'ai generated art' it's art ripped from art real people made, and likewise whatever output we get from an ai stems from some person somewhere. it ultimately is just borrowing the voice of real people and their real opinions.

shakespeare is absolutely hard because the english is old and full of references that even the english no longer understand without guidance! i think if you're interested in romeo + juliet you should absolutely watch the 1996 movie, because it's really beautifully true to the feel and emotion of the play while translating it into a modern setting which makes the text a lot more easily understood. and it's sick. mercutio is so cool. the visuals are outstanding.

i don't know that i can give a good verdict on 1984 vs brave new world as our likely future. my thoughts on those 2 books in particular were like... i remember brave new world gave me the vibe that huxley had a lot of weird sexual hangups, and like a lot of his type of author he had 50/50 valid criticisms of liberal/libertarian capitalism and moral panic over irrelevant issues. 1984 on the other hand is a very particular/time-specific critique and a lot grimmer, and as such easier to read because it's less believable a permanent future.

anw in terms of 'accuracy', a lot of elements from those books exist in our current society, but that's because most dystopia is based on the horrors of present day rather than any genius visions of the future. i will squarely admit i don't enjoy the genre, maybe because i don't like to induce existential anxiety in myself when i read or maybe because i prefer my fictitious social critiques to be less... idk, exaggerated. i feel the same way abt candide.

also your message is very kind to me anon, no need to be so hard on yourself either! i'm always happy to weigh in on random subjects of interest.

[crowandtalbot]

Yeah listening to Tim Cain's YouTube, he's a great game designer, but he's not the expert of his own mind and it shows.

He's like I was when I was a hardline republican who loved punk: the play is never about us and if it really, really feels like it's about us it's actually something really esoteric and mysterious or it's merely an aesthetic choice.

Authors are just people who write stuff down, not secret arbiters of universal truths. Tim Cain and (for arguably better reasons) Akira Toriyama are excellent examples of that.

Death of the author wasn't ever supposed to be a more intellectual sounding way to say you should separate the art from the artist, it's an acknowledgment that a person's mind doesn't come with an internal logic that's hard coded and unchanging like a computer program. Every memory, every like and dislike, every instance of belief structure is recreated on the spot when remembered. But writing is the act of recording a string of these regenerations into a coherent thought that can be communicated. Truly, subconscious shit wills out in the writing, new revelations occur through the process of writing, new revelations occur after having finished and published it and forgotten what you wrote and going back to read it again. The audience doesn't experience the internal murk of the author's mind; they experience an uninterrupted chain of many imperfect links in thought and can only conclude that there are no imperfections at all if the chain remains strong. Once the book is out there, regardless of what kind of book (or article) it is, the author cannot make people unread parts they don't like and unmake the connections they see in the text. In the sense of an author telling you "the curtains are just blue" or "actually the blue is a reference" after the text is published is irrelevant. Who they were when they wrote that passage is dead, all that remains is the text evidence that they ever were that person. So if the evidence is not there, or worse there's evidence to the contrary, then that person the author was is just flat out lost to time and the author sitting in front of you can only attempt to reassemble that person with half remembered facts and an entirely new set of experiences.

In other words, people are not static. Writing is. So once the text is published, what it means is entirely based on interpretation. So if the author disagrees with their audience then in order of likelihood: they cannot communicate very well, they didn't realize something about themselves until after the audience pointed it out, they don't remember, they are an entirely new person who is lying to hold up a fidelity of character that was never there, they're just flat out lying, or the audience actually is misinterpreting something (usually from translation error or cultural differences or large gaps of time between the publication and the present such that they might as well be from a different culture).

This is how David Mech’s 1970 book "The Wolf: Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species" based on Rudolph Schenkel's 1947 publication "Expressions Studies on Wolves" can lead to "alpha male" bullshit and the omegaverse. Schenkel posited that wolves fight for dominance. Mech conducts an observational study of wolves that supports that idea and calls the dominant wolves "alphas" and when he published the book it became a cultural phenomenon. Mech realized he conducted his study on captive wolves of pre 1970's zoos and his old conclusions couldn't explain the new observations he was making of wild wolves. Ever since he's been trying to get everyone to understand that there was never such a thing as an alpha wolf; packs are formed by families with the parents corralling their kids, nieces, and nephews. Before his book in the 1970's he expected to see fights for dominance since that was the prevailing theory, and he misinterpreted the stress of a captive environment with nothing to do but be jeered at by loud crowds as how wolves naturally act.

But now that the book has been published, there's no putting the toothpaste back in that tube. The audience ran with this law of the jungle and survival of the fittest bullshit and alpha bros are unironically doing podcast episodes on applying omegaverse tropes to their relationships.

Tim Cain doesn't know what he's writing, Akira Toriyama never remembered what he wrote, and David Mech is learned that what he wrote was wrong. And yet the texts still remain, ripe for interpretation by entirely new eyes.

Folks act like "maybe the author isn't the final authority about what their work means" is some wanky post-modern nonsense and not a simple recognition that a lot of authors are perfectly prepared to bullshit about their own work. Like, leaving big-name popular media aside, I have personally encountered authors being actively disingenuous about their own work for all of the following reasons:

A true answer wouldn't fit the image they've cultivated.

They've decided they like the explanation the readers/viewers have come up with better than what they actually had in mind.

Something that was originally intended as a standalone work ended up growing into a franchise or series, and now they're pretending that was the plan all along for some reason.

They don't want to admit that the bit you're asking about is genuinely just a plot hole.

The real answer gets into some shit they don't care to discuss, so they've prepared a cover story to explain away the parts they don't want to talk about.

Their politics have changed since they wrote it, but they don't want to acknowledge that, so they're constantly trying to re-interpret everything they've ever written to be perfectly consistent with whatever their positions are this week.

They wrote it decades ago and they honestly don't remember what they were thinking at the time, so they're just making shit up; sometimes they also don't remember what shit they made up the last time, so the answer is different every time they're asked.

The work in question is at least partly autobiographical and they can't tell the truth without confessing to a crime in the process.

Most of the good bits are plagiarised and they don't really understand it themselves.

They're lying to you on purpose, for evil reasons.

[hunxi-after-hours]

thinking about the line 他是审判我的人 in 《小蘑菇》, as one does, because obviously it’s like The Line of the book but also it really gathers together so many of the thoughts and themes and central questions of the novel, and also the disparate threads of Lu Feng as the deuteragonist

(spoilers for assorted apocalyptic mushroom nonsense below)

I remember spending quite a while trying to decide how I wanted to translate 审判 shenpan / 审判者 shenpan zhe while I was like, chaosblogging about this mushroom book in the first place because I couldn’t quite place my finger on the right tenor of the word. I’ve seen it translated as judgement/judge, which is absolutely correct because there is that element of law, legality, government authority to 审判 shenpan as a verb, which makes 审判者 shenpan zhe (literally “one who 审判 shenpans”) a judge

but there is something more to the 审判官 shenpan guan of 《小蘑菇》 than just “judge,” since in English, that conjures up images of courtrooms and stateliness, all rise and a platform where the primary focus is fact and logic and argumentation, which is so very removed from the world and responsibilities of the 审判官 shenpan guan in 《小蘑菇》. the legal resonances remain, but in these endtimes, the 审判官 shenpan guan are not just judges, but literally judge, jury, and executioner

one of the reasons why the process of 审判 shenpan (judgement, arbitration) in this book is so shocking and, well, disturbing is its total divorce from any alignment with the moral valences of judgment. the word 审判 shenpan itself calls to mind — and this is true in both Chinese and English — justice, righteousness, deservedness. that is how law is supposed to work; that is what judges are supposed to do. they should uphold standards of legality, of correctness. when a person is judged, information is assessed, their rights and wrongs balanced on public scales, and the sentence passed should be deserved. but in the world of 《小蘑菇》, there is nothing moral, or righteous, or just about the process of 审判 shenpan. there is no judge, no jury, no public trial, no agreement on the civilized course of action. there is only this: training, instinct, the reaction of a moment, the benefit of mankind, higher than all other principles, and then — the gunshot

An Zhe asks Lu Feng at one point in the book if he regrets what he does, massacring thousands of the very people he ostensibly protects, becoming universally feared and hated by the people he continually sacrifices for, and Lu Feng says that he doesn’t, just that sometimes, he doesn’t know what he is judging. and this, to me, is so telling: the split-second judgments that Lu Feng makes, the moment of 审判 shenpan — all of that is nothing more than skill and performance. there is nothing inherently moral or correct or good in the act of 审判 shenpan; he is simply assessing, based on training and experience and an unerring intuition, whether the person before him has been infected. and if all of his training and experience and unerring intuition point to yes, then it is simple; there is only one thing he is supposed to do, in his role as the city’s Arbiter. just the trigger. just the gunshot

when Lu Feng shoots someone after he judges them, he doesn’t shoot them because they are guilty, because they’ve done something wrong, because they deserve it. in fact, none of them deserve it; no one has done anything wrong. and yet — he pulls the trigger

in the world of 《小蘑菇》, there is nothing moral, or righteous, or just about the process of 审判 shenpan, and that feels like such a betrayal of the word, a betrayal of humanity, a betrayal of everything human civilization is supposed to stand for: law, order, rationality. 审判 shenpan as it has become fundamentally disavows everything that’s supposed to separate humanity from the creatures and monsters outside their walls, everything that’s supposed to make humanity special and notable and worth saving from the descending apocalypse. lives are so, so precious in the endtimes as the human population dwindles towards extinction; and yet, the 审判庭 Shenpan Ting / Arbitration Division keeps killing more, the Arbiter keeps killing more, Lu Feng keeps killing more

one of the things I really appreciate about the book is that it doesn’t really try to justify the morality of the 审判者法案 shenpan zhe fa’an; beyond a half-hearted “it was what we had to do to survive,” the book doesn’t contort its moral framework to try and prove that Lu Feng was right to kill thousands of people a year. like the 玫瑰花宣言 Rose Oath, the Law of Arbitration is a cruel system, the product of a cruel universe, an uncaring apocalypse. did these two systematic, legalized, ongoing atrocities help humanity survive to the end of the book? yes. was it right to do so?

well.

is it worth it to give up what it means to be human in order to save all of humanity? is a human civilization that decides to strategically and systematically dehumanize portions of its population when necessary still worth saving? is a human civilization that applies a brutal utilitarianism over and over again in its decisions still human? when the world is ending, where do morality and justice go? how is one to find meaning in the impartial descent of that good night?

but back to Lu Feng. back to 他是审判我的人. what a raw line, what a profound declaration. because, as we’ve seen, there are two layers to 审判 shenpan in this world. the first — what human civilization has made of it: the process by which an arbiter determines if a subject is human, and if not, the subsequent elimination of the subject. when Lu Feng says that An Zhe is the one who judges him (and there is a delightful ambiguity here, depending on how you translate it, the one who judges him vs. the one who can judge him vs. the one who may judge him — all slightly different casts to the same statement), he is saying, in the language of his time: An Zhe is the one who may decide if what Lu Feng is, if what Lu Feng has become, if what the apocalypse has made Lu Feng into, is still human. and if not, then whether Lu Feng is still worth saving

Lu Feng says this much earlier in his actions than his words, when he leaves his gun in An Zhe’s backpack. already, then — An Zhe is the one he gives the symbol of his Arbiter status to. in other words, if An Zhe decided that Lu Feng had to die, Lu Feng would accept that judgment

but the second layer to 审判 shenpan, what it used to mean: An Zhe is the one who learns everything about Lu Feng, who judges his worthiness. herein lies the central absurdity of 《小蘑菇》, which is also the heart of its love story: An Zhe is the one who understands Lu Feng, against all odds. Lu Feng pushes An Zhe away for it, initially — 你懂我什么，你连人都不是 / how can you understand me?  you’re not even human — because what could possibly be more terrifying to an Arbiter who has been given governmental license to kill any person he wishes without the slightest justification? what could possibly be more terrifying than the threat of someone understanding him, and thereby attaining the ability to truly judge him for what he is?

Lu Feng isn’t afraid of hatred, isn’t afraid of misunderstanding — that is the world he knows, the world he chose willingly when he entered the 审判庭 Shenpan Ting / Arbitration Division. it’s okay for people to hate him, because they don’t truly understand the scope of what he does, and so long as he is secure in his faith in that what he does is for the greater human good, he is unshakeable, unmovable

but An Zhe defies all of that by choosing to try, and try again — to understand this confusing human, to decipher the logic in the contradictions of his actions and the terseness of his words. this frail mushroom has the absolute audacity to look at Lu Feng and say what no one has said to him, insane things like you are a good person and I understand you

how terrifying it is to be understood, because nothing is more crushing than to be understood and to still be judged unworthy

and what a colossal catharsis it is, to be understood and judged, to be laid bare and known, and, when your faith has been shaken, to be forgiven

perhaps here is where one finds meaning in the world of 《小蘑菇》 — a world where the survival of humanity still remains unknown, where the twilight of the universe continues to expand across the desolation of an unrestful wasteland — in the knowledge and forgiveness of another, in the profound joy of being judged, and found worthy

[enrychan]

Burakovsky fanfiction recs

ok so I read every single Burakovsky fanfic on AO3 (no, really) and I started thinking about writing down a list of those I particularly appreciate. because the Patho fandom is tiny, and the Burakovsky fandom is even tinier, but there are a lot of incredible talents in it, and they deserve all the recognition we can muster.

I apologize to those who did not make it into this list, unfortunately I can’t read Russian (for now... that might change in the future😏) AND I have very specific tastes. Which is why some authors are repeated more than once (sorry!). Also I’m following at least a couple of beautiful fanfics that are currently unfinished, and I’m probably gonna include those in the next list.

You’re all extremely talented though, and I hope to read more of your works very soon (do I refresh the Burakovsky tag each day? yes I do)

anyway here’s my list, in no particular order! Enjoy all the love, hate, death and philosophy!🥰

In Vivo by meradorm. After a long silence, the Haruspex travels to the capital to seek out his old companion.

Arguably the best fanfics in the Patho fandom; and one of the best fanfics I’ve ever read. The writing style simulates the first translation of Patho Classic, which was weird and sometimes almost incomprehensible, but somehow it enhanced the odd, alien experience of the first game. Using this particular and sometimes difficult language, this fanfic gives the impression of being an integral part of the original story. The characters and the love story are beautiful and raw, sweet and cruel, and the ending is so... so perfectly Pathologic it makes me angry. Prepare lots&lots of tissues because you’re gonna cry your eyes out!

How cleverly the trap is made by Modlisznik. "My apologies." Daniil clears his throat. "Usually I reserve views like this for at least fourth, maybe fifth date."

Ok yes I’m going to recommend a lot of fanfics by Modlisznik, I just really really like their style. This is one of my favorites because Daniil is so in character, trying his best to appear strong even while in pain and almost blind with one of his migraines... and I’m always weak for Artemy being sweet and caring for Daniil. Just *chef’s kiss* excellent

Of the Town and the Steppe by Modlisznik. Artemy wonders how Daniil feels about this vastness, autumnal grass as far as the eye can see, the sky so clear, hanging so low, so close you can almost touch it, you can almost get swallowed whole. Insignificant, a little speckle on the face of Earth. Daniil is a creature of the city, Artemy thinks, of clear boundaries, of walls to hide behind, of places to be alone in. He must feel exposed. I'm a bad host, Artemy thinks.

Just a romantic, intimate moment between our two idiots out in the steppe. Daniil imagining all the places in the Capital he would like to show Artemy is so unbearably sweet I think I’ve cavities now. Totally worth it though.

All about Blood by Modlisznik. Daniil is aware that Isidor has been murdered just a few days ago. That his memory is still fresh, his touch lingers in this place. That Daniil, an intruder, shouldn't come down here to Isidor’s workshop - his laboratory - his sanctum - and most certainly, he shouldn't be here to fuck Isidor’s son. Even less, to use the elder Burakh's table for that purpose. He's aware of that. He also doesn't care.

Hot damn. This fanfics pushes all my buttons at once and then dances on the keyboard just to be sure. Artemy/Daniil kinky sex? Check. On the stone table in Artemy’s lab? Check. Subtle power games between the two? Check. Artemy marking Daniil with his blood? Check. A sprinkle of bondage just to spice things up a bit? Check. Um... is it just me or it’s kind of hot in here?

The Line of Red by Modlisznik. Bachelor Dankovsky does not believe in luck. Artemy wants him to understand, that the charm he's offering will protect him - just not in the way Daniil thinks it does.

Another sweet moment brought to you by or Official Sweetheart Artemy Burakh: Artemy wants to give Daniil something to remind him that he’s not alone, even in his darkest moments, that Artemy is his tagloor. Daniil doesn’t understand all that steppe folklore, but recognizes a precious gift when he’s given one.

Something old, something new by Modlisznik. In which Artemy considers the importance of not being watched, and Murky's doll needs urgent medical attention.

Just an adorable fanfic and a joy to read from start to finish. Artemy is best dad, Murky is best daughter, Daniil is back with a new title, and I’m always ready for some teary-eyed happy reunions.

Bloodflood by Xyloto. A flood of blood to the heart.

Artemy is used to be on top, and the relative new experience of being on the receiving end doesn’t start particularly well for him, but he is determined to let Daniil have what he wants. Daniil has other ideas on the matter. I have a thing for “top that bottoms for his bottom”, and especially in this case because this fanfic is written beautifully. It keeps all the more abrasive traits of Artemy’s personality&speech, while remaining very sweet and romantic somehow.

A Curse Befalls Your Heart by CurrieBelle. Daniil Dankovsky suffers from a Steppe curse. Burakh performs triage.

Speaking of sweet and romantic, are you ready for a good bucket of literal honey? This is my comfort fanfic, the one I return to every once in a while when I need something soft and lovely to shut off my brain. Not only that, but the story is awesome too, because it is based on an actual canon curse in the Patho lore. Remember when Anna Angel was cursed with the “returning heart” in Patho 2? What if something similar happened to Daniil? Luckily, Artemy is there to help.

Ode to the Body by kylee. In which Bachelor and Haruspex flatter each other shamelessly.

The Powers That Be have always destroyed Daniil’s self esteem by reducing him to a list of failures. Artemy wants him to understand that he’s not just his failures, nor his accomplishments, but so much more. Sex ensues. Praise kink anyone??? (yes please)

life overflowing by Yellow. Artemy needs someone to look at what he's done, to see he's done well, to take over for him, his head and his heart. just for a little while.

This is both lovely and kind of heartbreaking, with some suicidal tendencies/ideation? I feel it is completely appropriate after all Artemy has gone through by this point in the story. But Daniil doesn’t have any intention of letting him go.

Vae Soli by Adoxography. Daniil becomes Artemy's unwilling caretaker when Artemy is infected with the Sand Pest and is forced to take a Shmowder to cure himself, or die in the attempt.

There are a lot of sick fics in the Patho fandom (obviously), but I particularly love this one because it doesn’t embellish the pitiful state of Artemy, caught between two terrible ailments, nor makes Daniil appear too soft and generous. There is rivalry between the two idiots (as it should be), but also trust and even some attraction on Daniil’s part. In other words, it rings true and believable!

sub derma by Jagged. Dankovsky takes to the Town better than he thinks, but less than he'd like. Artemy would know.

Super sexy fanfic! dom!Daniil turns Artemy on with some pain play which Artemy is only too happy to be subjected to. I just love the power dynamic between the two, it’s visceral and even a little bit cruel at times, but the absolute trust they have in each other makes everything weirdly romantic.

foreign bodies by hoverbun. They have some time to themselves between dissections and the sharing of alms.

So it turns out that I also have a Thing for fics about shaving. apparently??? Artemy has some free time and a beard to get rid of. He asks Daniil for help with that. And everyone knows there are few things sexier than a hot doctor with a very sharp blade pointed at your throat!

I hope you blink before I do by vespirus. Maybe he was fated to gravitate towards men like these; the men with loose morals, the men who understood what it meant to be an arbiter of life and death decisions, the men who felt the weight of the future on their shoulders. Or maybe he just had an inescapable interest in the macabre.

AU fanfic about Daniil as an unscrupulous researcher and Artemy as a medical undergraduate willing to kill to make enough money to keep living and studying in the Capital. In other words they are both horrible people, and the tension between them is so thick you could slice it with a knife. There also a sequel, but it’s a death fic and I personally don’t like that. I hope the author will write an alternative ending where they become an awesome couple of gay criminals in love sooner or later!

[afishtrap]

Following on the continued meta-analysis adventures of @soobaki and @caramelcheese, but only sort of related to the above (very interesting and sadly true) observations about Yuuri’s extreme anxiety, with major hat-tippage to @soobaki‘s comments about the stigma of mental illness in Japan. I think I finally figured out how/why Kubo’s doing an olympic-level retconning on YoI.

Remember how there were all the meta-posts (from the above two, among others) about how Yuuri was an unreliable narrator? That he’d say one thing, but do something else, and combined with his extreme anxiety, we viewers should keep in mind that this makes him unreliable? That his brain talks him into seeing the worst, and ep10/Victor’s POV clearly illustrated that Yuuri’s POV is off-kilter from any relatively objective reality?

Kubo doesn’t see Yuuri as unreliable. In fact, I doubt she even recognizes his anxiety. Everything I’m seeing of her various interviews, it all only makes sense if Yuuri is an accurate narrator.

If his brain isn’t playing tricks on him, but is giving him a realistic view of the world, then Victor’s questions about past sweethearts, Victor’s offer to be a boyfriend, Victor’s suggestion of a kiss to fix Yuuri’s (really-not-a-) meltdown, are all facets of Victor’s eccentric personality and hardly indicative of anything, y’know, romantic. That Yuuri’s declaration of wanting to ‘explore love’ and hold onto Victor is entirely because he wants to keep Victor as a coach, and not an inadvertent blurting out of any emotional truth. That Yuuri buying the rings was simply because he was there, they were there, and y’know, gold like a medal, and his actions were entirely sensical; exchanging the rings in a church, with a choir nearby, was entirely because it was as close to a shrine (for omamori-exchange) as one could get in Barcelona. And that rings are of course what any athlete would exchange*. That Yuuri panicking over Victor’s reaction to the other skaters wasn’t Yuuri’s mind going into overdrive, but was an accurate read of Victor’s true feelings. That Yuuri’s wish to end things wasn’t his anxiety wrapping him up in knots, but an expression of his selfishness. Or whatever.

[ * I think my eyes just rolled right out of my head. It’s far more common for athletes to exchange pendants, or literal charms (like the kind that go on bracelets) than rings.]

Here’s my theory: Kubo never really grokked the multiple layers of the characters, which is why she describes struggling at times to come up with the script based on the outline from Sayo. Then somewhere last-minute, the team decided to leave the door open for a second season, and decided this required Yuuri not winning gold, and Kubo ended up writing this without Sayo’s original outline as backbone. I saw a translation of Kubo talking about the opening scene in ep12, when Victor is crying, and her description of her difficulties was a patently obvious case of “I knew the characters needed to do X, so I just kept messing with it until they did” -- the plot (or scene resolution) was driving things, not the characters.

That’s a writer who hasn’t thought through the character motivations enough to know to say, “this is not working for these characters; I’m trying to push them into a plot movement that’s making them OOC”. Or, it’s a sign of a writer who doesn’t even realize that’s what she’s doing (which I would argue is actually worse).

This is the only way I can reconcile that--after eleven episodes of Yuuri’s anxiety--all it takes is Victor saying, “okay, enough pretending, get out there and do the real thing,” and Yuuri does it. (That is NOT how anxiety works, and it’s also kind of offensive; what the hell has Yuuri been doing all those years before now, anyway?) It’s the only way Yuuri can break a world record and not recoil in abject hurt when Victor steals the moment of crowning awesome and makes it all about Victor (”the ultimate diss”). And all the other crap that was wrong with the characterizations.

It’s the only way I can reconcile all this platonic their-love-is-so-transcendent bullshit, because if we take Yuuri as a completely reliable narrator, then of course Victor’s words were just a joke. Of course Victor’s flirtation is just, well, Victor. Of course none of it means anything, and they’re simply coach and student. In Yuuri’s anxiety-twisted head, it’d take night goggles and a pickax to dig out the truth, except Yuuri is now in the hands of an author with the same damn blindness as him.

I haven’t seen a single interview from the co-author, so I have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes. If one of the two co-authors is this freaking clueless (intentionally or not) about the characterization, I have no hope that a second season will be enough to fix it. In fact, given all the noise from Kubo, Kubo, Kubo, it makes me wonder whether there will even be a second season. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a quiet battle going on over who gets to be the ultimate interpreter of these two characters.

If that final arbiter ends up being Kubo, a second season might end up making that horrendous yaoi-inflected RoB/YoI crossover game look like the heights of Dostoevsky for characterization.

[swipestream]

SENSOR SWEEP: Tedious Dice Rolling, Indulgent Spaces, Mary Sue Agitprop Vectors, and Required Reading

Comics (The Last Redoubt) WHY REBEL, AND NOT THE STRIPES — “Like it or not, a flag that was to some a symbol of states that fought to preserve a system that included slavery, and is associated purely with that by some, is to many, including some blacks who’s forefathers fought for the south, a symbol of gallantry, bravery, and resolve in the face of fire and fury, wrack and ruin. Of doing what is perceived, rightly or wrongly in the test of time, as right instead of what is popular. Of not backing down. That flag flew over WW2, in Korea, and in Vietnam.”

D&D (Ultanya) Twenty Questions with Rose Estes — “No, I never played the game. I was drawn by the stories but had little to absolutely no interest in all of the dice rolling which seemed tedious and worse, interrupted the flow of the narrative. I realize this is heresy, but so be it. Few things in my life have had as major an influence on my life and creating the person I am than reading, so, despite my lack of formal training, I am first and foremost, a storyteller and that was always the impetus behind the books.”

Traveller (Tales to Astound) The Expectations of a Traveller Referee at the Start of the Hobby — “The fact remains in countless cases judgments have to be made on the part of the Referee in any RPG. Now, there are two paths here: One is to encourage people to become better Referees through advice and practice. The other is to take the responsibilities of being a capable Referee away from Referees and shift those responsibilities to the text of the roleplaying game itself. For the most part the hobby followed the second path. The rules and text changed (and have continued to change) to move the Referee away from being the impartial arbiter of actions and situations during play and into the role of applying rules from the rulebook. And this has become the default assumption of the RPG hobby.”

D&D (Playing at the World) D&D In the News (1976): Fazzle on the Ryth — “Although Duffy does not spell ‘orc’ as we would, you would be hard-pressed to find an earlier mainstream press mention of displacer beasts or umber hulks. Many early journalists had trouble comprehending the D&D game, but Duffy fares pretty well, especially in how he faithfully relates that the original published system was really just guidelines. As he summarizes, ‘Essentially, what you get is a rule book, and the players wing it from there — modifying rules and adapting as they go along.'”

RPGs (Walker’s Retreat) How To RPG: This Is How It’s Done — “This is how it’s done, folks. You don’t dictate a narrative. You don’t run a railroad. You don’t sit there and react to events. You have to be pro-active as a player, and as the Game Master you have to be Crom- unyielding and uncaring, favoring none and letting fate play out as it will. Death of a PC isn’t anything to cry about; shrug it off, get a fresh sheet, and get on with rerolling a new guy. When players earn their wins, let them have and enjoy them; villains and monsters are there to be slain and looted, not mourned or complained about. Let the survivors tell the tales; the play is the thing at the table- not any pre-determined events or outcomes.”

Pulp Revolution (Bibliorati) HINDI PULP—VIMAL! — “Known as the father of Hindi pulp crime fiction, Surender Mohan Pathak has written close to 300 novels, including 60+ standalone thrillers, 120+ adventures of crime reporter Sunil, 22+ investigations of the Philosopher Detective Sudhir, and 42 of his anti-hero Vimal crime thrillers. While working a full-time job in Delhi with Indian Telephone Industries, Pathak began his writing career in the early 1960s translating Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and the works of James Hadley Chase into the Hindi language. His first original story, The Man 57 Years Old, was published in 1959, followed by his first full length novel, featuring his crime reporter series character Sunil, in 1963.”

Fake D&D in the News (The New Yorker) The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons & Dragons — “A decade ago, when developers attempted to bring Dungeons & Dragons into the twenty-first century by stuffing it with rules so that it might better resemble a video game, the glue of the game, the narrative aspect that drew so many in, melted away. Players hacked monsters to death, picked up treasure, collected experience points, and coolly moved through preset challenges. The plotters of the game’s fifth edition seemed to remember that D. & D.’s strength lay in creating indulgent spaces (get lost in your gnomish identity, quest or don’t, spend time flirting in the tavern) and opposing whatever modes of human industry prevailed among the broader public. D. & D. now has vastly simpler rules than those found in an iTunes terms-and-conditions agreement.”

Comics (PJ Media) Prominent Conservative Artists Blacklisted Because of Involvement with Alt*Hero Comics Series — “The fact that a comics publisher, of any political stripe, would refuse to utilize the work of an accomplished illustrator like Timothy Lim simply because he worked with someone else they don’t like is absurd, but more importantly, it is proof that they are less interested in producing quality content than they are in pursuing approval from social justice warriors.”

Information is the Death of Narrative (Lewis Pulsipher) Video Games as a Vehicle of Imagination — “Games through the ages have let people make their own stories, with no pretension of telling them a story (that’s what novels, plays, films are for). This is what the video game industry often loses sight of: games are enjoyable because of what you DO, not because of what you see or hear. Technology is not necessary to good games….”

The Pulps (Paul Lucas) Weird Tales’ female readership — “In the early 1940s, Weird Tales decided to start up a fan organisation called the Weird Tales Club, and they listed the new members in their letter column, The Eyrie…. I’ve looked at all the other issues for the initial run (1923 to 1954) and this is the only list of members that I can find. Check out the breakdown by sex. There are 60 new members of the Weird Tales Club, but going by names, at least 16 of these were women. That’s 27%. If we take Avis to be a woman’s name (the infallible internet says it is), and Eleanot as a misspelling for Eleanor, that makes 18 women, or 30%.”

RPGs (Walker’s Retreat) Time to Sift Out the Wanna-Be Henchmen — “The reason that proper play went away is because of two major threads. The first is that the founding generation and cohort worked off a set of assumptions that turned out to not be as obvious as they thought. The second is that the succeeding cohorts, especially once videogames took off and became the primary gaming medium, acculturated to a very passive paradigm of gameplay for no more nefarious a reason than because videogames work best that way.”

Publishing (The Federalist) How Never-Satisfied Social Justice Mobs Are Ruining YA Book Publishing — “If publishing houses want to see their trends turn positive, they need to look at what independent authors are doing to gain market share. Thinking outside the box and creating something different from what others are doing in the field is what defines great literary works, not repeating the same thing because it’s the only safe space allowed for an author to write.”

Pulp Revolution (Kairos) The Fire Rises — “Note to J.J. Abrams and Larry Kasdan: it’s possible to write an action girl who can swing a burning hurt stick and read minds without making her an insufferable Mary Sue agitprop vector. It’s not a violation of some SFF blasphemy law to show female characters having vulnerabilities, making mistakes, and even plagued with besetting vices that sometimes gravely imperil herself and others.”

RPGs (The Mixed GM) Gamma World 1E… Why Did They Make A Second Edition? — “Because there are no classes, when you gain enough XP to level up, instead of gaining a class ability, you roll on a chart to see what you get (such as +1 to an attribute or +1 to hit). There is something freeing about the random rolls for almost everything. In other systems, if your character is garbage, it is your fault that you did not properly optimize your ‘character build’. However, in this game, if your character is awful, it is the dice. It isn’t your fault. But, through clever play, you can overcome the limitations of your character.”

RPGs (The Last Redoubt) Gamma World — “I will say this – Jeffro plays in a very open-table friendly way, as I’ve also described. The campaign centers around the town. There’s always an excuse for someone new to pop in. Unlike Traveller campaigns that move around, the small time scale to find things and go places provides more of an excuse as to why someone isn’t available for one foray but is the next.”

Television (SuperversiveSF) The STD that will Never go Viral — “When Michael returns, she leaves med bay to storm the bridge, demanding that it’s the Klingons, therefore we must attack them now. Because that’s how first contact protocols work (In this timeline, no one has talked to a Klingon in 100 years. Vulcans just shoot first, and never ask questions. Yes, really.) In order to get the Klingons to decloak, Michael says “Target them!!!” Upon further study, the massive space station is really … a glorified tomb, covered in coffins. And she had them target it. Because all anthropologists want to blow up culture.”

History (Hyperallergic) The Rise and Fall of the Viking “Allah” Textile — “The truth is, the Viking textile from Birka has no Arabic on it at all. Evidence for contact between the Vikings and the Islamic world is abundant and uncontested, but this particular textile fragment cannot be counted among that evidence. What the rapid rise and fall of this story reveals is perhaps more telling about this particular moment in our accelerated media world than it is about Vikings and Muslims.”

Pulp Revolution (Wasteland and Sky) The Revolution is Here! — “I sat down, wrote it up, edited it, and submitted it, all in a few hours. I wanted to embody the pulp spirit with every aspect of submission, and, thankfully, it was accepted! Other than a few line and clarification edits, this story is largely the same as it was when I put it through at pulp speed.”

Movies (Benjamin Cheah Kai Wai) Thor: Ragnarok and the Rejection of Myth — “Thor: Ragnarok acknowledges no morals and celebrates no virtues, it elevates no gods and eschews the epic, it sacrifices the mythic in exchange for lame winks at the audience. If this is the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I want no more of it.”

Movies (Tor.com) The Exorcist TV Series Subverts Its Own Troubled Franchise — “Mannnn are women ever evil in the Exorcist movies. Or, should I say, adult female sexuality is evil and dangerous to society. Actually, scratch that—any sexuality is dangerous. The ads for The Exorcist, and much of the criticism around it, focus on the idea that it’s about an outside evil attacking purity and innocence, in the form of a demon targeting a young, sweet-natured girl. But when you look at the development of the book and film, it becomes apparent that a deep discomfort with gender and sex were coded into it from the beginning.”

Appendix N (Black Gate) In Search of a new Weird Tales: An Interview with Joseph Goodman, Howard Andrew Jones, and the Talking Skull! — “In the 1982 edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide, the creator included an obscure bibliography. It was Appendix N, the 14th appendix in the book, where he listed the works of fiction that inspired him to create D&D. That list has since become notorious. It is now a de facto ‘required reading list’ for diehard fans of the game. Well, I read every book on the list over the course of many years, and it piqued my interest in vintage fantasy novels. The list includes names like Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Jack Vance, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Abraham Merritt, Jack Williamson, Manly Wade Wellman, and others. What do these authors have in common? They got their start in pulp fantasy magazines from the early 20th century.”

SENSOR SWEEP: Tedious Dice Rolling, Indulgent Spaces, Mary Sue Agitprop Vectors, and Required Reading published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi