#and in all three you learn it through obviously biased perspectives but at least it gives you a perspective to look at

[sieglinde-freud]

lowkey the more i revisit three houses the more boring azure moon becomes to me. like i like dimitri and everything but everytime i see that route im j like “thats it?” and sometimes i feel crazy bc everyones like “isnt this the best fire emblem story in the history of fire emblem and isnt dimitri the best character ever” and im like well. well i. i dont. if you say so…

[isthehorsevideocute]

I'll start this off with the fact that everyone has their biases. I have mine. I'll do my best to give my most unbiased point of view on this as I can.

That said I am not actually overly negative about western pleasure. Do I think it's dumb, yes. Do I think it's cruel by design, no. Do I think that sometimes the training behind it can be questionable, yes. But that's the case with my disciplines too. I'm a jumper, sometimes people beat horses, make them hit poles, use devices like pinch boots to make hitting rails more painful, or just have all around lazy, dangerous, or overall detrimental methods of working their horses on the flat. Some people are of the opinion that horses shouldn't be made to jump at all. Obviously I disagree with that but that has to be the perspective I come into criticizing other disciplines with.

So western pleasure is a riding discipline that is judged on a horse's suitability as a western pleasure horse, being as they are a horse one would ride just for enjoyment rather than work, like a ranch horse.

Many will point out that it has changed over the years and this is the modern iteration of it thanks to generations of selective breeding and evolution of training methods (as is the case for all disciplines).

So yes there is a natural aspect to this type of movement as it was bred for specifically, and it is further refined through training.

The part that distinguishes this as "pleasure" - something a person would want to ride for fun - is the lack of suspension in the movement.

In terms of gaits for horses, suspension refers to when all four feet are off the ground. Generally the trot/jog has two moments of suspension as the diagonal pairs of legs push the horse into the next stride

The gif above is showing a lope/canter which is usually a 3 beat movement where the outside hind starts it, the inside hind and outside fore touch down at the same time, and the inside fore (called the leading leg) pushes the horse off into the moment of suspension

Likewise the gallop is a similar motion but is 4 beats instead of 3 as the stride is bigger and the push off into suspension is stronger

So when you ride a horse, the suspension and subsequent landing is what makes sitting the movement difficult (thus why you see jumpers and jockeys standing in the stirrups rather than sitting in the saddle). So when you look for a horse that is comfortable to sit on, minimal to no suspension is what is often sought out. This is why gaited horses have a lot of appeal for pleasure and distance riding as many of these gaits involve the horse having at least one foot on the ground at a time usually with a 4 beat gait (thus no moment of suspension).

For example the running walk of the Tennessee walking horse

So for the wp horse above, you can see the three beat movement of the canter, but the moment of suspension is practically nonexistent. It's honestly kind of refreshing to see a wp horse with an actual 3 beat canter as a lot of them are so slow with their back legs that the canter ends up being 4 beats.

Honestly a lot of the reason the horse has that wounded appearance is because of the unilateral movement of the lope, which is just how a lope/canter goes, but combine that with the fact the horse is moving so slowly it gives the illusion of a severe limp.

Scrolling through the comments there's an awful lot of opinions and not a whole lot of facts so I'll throw some out:

-there's no scientific data to suggest that western pleasure is bad for horses physically or mentally

-western pleasure horses, like every other horse, see veterinarians (given these horses are at aqha congress, they needed to be cleared by a vet to attend and there are vets at that facility)

-canter and lope are just two different names for the same gait (the three beat gait that's faster than the trot/jog but slower than a gallop). And yes this horse is loping not doing some funny walk it learned through years of some ambiguous torture

-there is a big gap in figuring out if a horse is distressed between the thresholds of throwing the rider and happy horse

On that last point I can't say for certain that this horse is 100% loving life in that gif because it's not close enough for me to see the finer details of the facial expression, however nothing in the body language from this view concerns me. The horse is traveling with an open throat (no shying behind the bit), the tail is swinging indicating a relaxed spine. The ear position could be stress, concentration, or relaxation but as I said, the details of the face that would put it in context are impossible to make out that this distance.

But yeah to sum it up there is a reason this type of movement is desired, it's not just for the fuck of it, it's because it's supposed to be easy to sit.

And for those saying this lope is some abomination against nature, it really is just a lope. Here is a gif of my horse cantering for reference. Same basic movement just significantly more suspension and speed

western pleasure horses at the canter always look like they’re limping off the battlefield, everything is smoke and craters and they’re injured and half dead from exhaustion but there’s nowhere to stop so they just keep jogging

some people apparently find this gait desirable.

[violet-t-9]

My take on why Caleb doesn’t trust Essek

I’ve seen a lot of discussion about “why doesn’t Caleb trust Essek” and here is just my two cents (spoilers, written after the new episode 131 talks machina). This will be very, very long, so beware. 

Before I start, this post is not meant to be against Essek and he is actually one of my top favourite characters. I wanted to get my thoughts out because I saw many people take Essek’s side and I want to consider Caleb’s perspective.

Also, the quotes are not EXACTLY accurate, but please bear with me. NOTHING I say reflects anything other than my own, biased interpretation of the events, so take it with a grain of salt. 

While it has been a long time in real life for us, in game time the peace talk was not that long ago. Liam has mentioned both as Caleb and in talks that Caleb had been very paranoid about Essek for a long time, thinking he was working them for his own agenda and could be Dynasty’s traitor. However, it is also confirmed that Caleb started to actually trust Essek because “the other shoe never dropped” and consider him a true friend - right before (“like two days later”) being the first one to discover (through Frumpkin) that he had been right about Essek since day one.

Imagine what that would do to Caleb, to finally letting himself trust just to get betrayed right away and to have his paranoia proven correct all along. Of course he still doesn’t trust Essek now, of course he is hurt. After the peace talks, Essek didn’t even seem to regret what he had done (he straight up said “I can’t say I regret what I have done”, also said seeing Adeen in chains was “freeing”). The first time he showed a genuine change was in episode 124, even then, Caleb failed to read his intentions with a nat 1 insight check, so he could not actually confirm that Essek was telling the truth (he was just given the “hard to read”) so basically he had no way of knowing if Essek was lying.

When Caleb thinks back on their past interactions, he would have to think about how everything Essek had said could be a lie, and that would taint any good memories they had. Even if we, as viewers, know that Essek was probably sincere most of the time, Caleb doesn’t know that. 

Essek had been lying to the party since they first met, he got close to M9 precisely because he wanted to use them to cover his beacon heist, to make sure that they “did not get too close to the truth”. He steered the party in the directions he wanted them to go in, like actively directing them to focus on Obann. And Essek was GOOD at what he did. M9 told him a lot of secrets - that they suspected a mole and that there are two beacons in the empire, etc. Essek succeeded in his objective and got a lot of information he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise because of his deception. Yes, he started to care for them somewhere along the line. At some point, he found himself actually wanting to be friends with M9, but that is a separate issue. He kept them in the dark, lied to their faces, betrayed their trust before they even met regardless. Now obviously he was in a very difficult position and probably felt like he could not tell them the truth (how would he tell them, anyways?), but it doesn’t change the fact that he used them for his goals and succeeded. 

Now Caleb and Essek had a mutually manipulative political-game-like dance going on when they first met, but that was more or less on equal footing and they probably both knew what each other was doing (they were both pretty obvious). Caleb also used his training to “keep [Essek] on the rails”, but that imo kind of pales in comparison to Essek using M9 to cover up his entire heist. Essek did help them a lot, but he did those things for favours, at least at first. He never cashed them (except the one vial Caleb gave him) but he didn’t have to - the favours worked, M9 decided not to expose him because he went out of his way to help them. Even after discovering the truth (that he was the catalyst of a war between two nations, one of which is 3 party members’ homeland), the M9 did not try to fight him or report him to literally ANYONE which would have gotten him killed. Caleb even gave Essek the hope that there IS a path to redemption when Essek didn’t believe in it. So yeah if I were Essek I would too be very grateful to M9. If I were Caleb I would probably never trust Essek ever again. 

Essek is shown to be completely uninterested in the Eyes of Nine but it was a valid concern. He did commit high treason for knowledge, it’s really not that much of a stretch that he’d be tempted by the city (exhibit A: Caleb himself, exhibit B: poor, poor Yussa). Good for him that he is not tempted, but Caleb’s suspicion was not uncalled for.

The thing is, M9 do trust Essek still. They told him literally everything about the TT and the city. Caleb even showed Essek the eye. It just makes me uncomfortable every time people say that M9 are “bad friends” for leaving Essek alone, or that Caleb is “mean” to Essek for not trusting him (by the way, the line about “that won’t help with the inside” was meant by Liam as “commiseration, not condemnation” if you didn’t know) but look, M9 doesn’t revolve around Essek? They have a lot of things to deal with and Essek was not on their top priority. They don’t have a responsibility to “fix” Essek’s morality issues (tbf, they still kinda did kick start that process). And hey, it’s great that Essek has obviously been doing pretty well for himself in terms of personal growth without the M9, and he could have reached out to them if he really wanted to. Remembering to use slots to message and check in with people is never M9′s strong suite.

Caleb also really didn’t endanger Essek more than Essek himself did. Caleb did used dunamancy in the empire (not resonant echo that he specifically learned from Essek, but something he reverse engineered by himself), but Trent would never have figured it out if Essek didn’t voluntarily work with Trent and the Assembly in the first place. Also, Caleb did apologize for endangering Essek (like he was supposed to, Essek deserved that apology).

So yeah, imo Caleb is right to not fully trusting Essek right now, for reasons I have mentioned above. However, Caleb clearly still cares about Essek, from the “just breathe” moment, the worry he felt, how he emphasized on the amulet. A lack of trust does not mean he just doesn’t care. Caleb was also very adamant about trusting Essek (“one person we can trust is better than three we cannot”) over his old friends (and obviously Trent). So again, I don’t really see him saying “we trust you more than my old teacher” as an issue - it’s just a statement, which is true, they do trust him more than Trent even if Trent may come with more power and numbers.

Yeah, Essek is very remorseful now, but they’ve seen this side of Essek for exactly two episodes (124 and 131), so I am not really surprised that they don’t just immediately go back to full trust mode with Essek. It will take some time, some bonding, but I’m sure the trust can be re-established. 

Just want to make it clear, I’m NOT saying Caleb is perfect. Caleb is a very flawed character (e.g. a hypocrite in terms of the eye tattoos) and I can see why some would see his interactions with Essek as problematic (but really, it’s from both sides). However, I do believe that some people twist Caleb’s words to Essek a lot and interpret them to be more vicious, manipulative and colder than he intends them to be/than they actually are because they dislike Caleb, or like Essek a lot, or for many other reasons. This post is about Caleb’s perspective so I’m not going to list all of his own flaws. I just think that in many posts I’ve seen people take Essek’s side and blame Caleb or the M9 and seem to forget that Essek did betray the M9 and “did a lot of shitty things” like Matt said. So this is just an alternative perspective for those people to consider.

Feel free to disagree, like I said these are only my opinions. That said, I’m really looking forward to the next episodes. I feel like they can establish how Essek may fit in the M9 now and maybe start some great trust-building. I cannot wait to see Essek’s interactions with M9 and I think the next few episodes will be very important for the character dynamics. 

[too-much-tdp]

Ok I found out about The Plot Twist in Through The Moon and now I have some theories.

Spoilers under the cut!

I’m thinking of three directions in which the reveal could take the story (although I’m sure there are more possibilities I haven’t even considered but those were the three that came to my mind first).

All of them are based on the premise that (at least at first) Viren and Claudia don’t know about Aaravos’ Viren clone because I would assume they leave the cocoon at some point if it doesn’t hatch immediately because they’ll have to try and survive now. I guess it’s not impossible that they stay with the cocoon and try to make that hole they fell into their “base camp” but I think as soon as the Viren clone emerges from the cocoon there might be an immediate conflict between Aaravos and Viren. I don’t think Viren can still be swayed by Aaravos if he realizes he is literally using him now by stealing his identity (but who knows, maybe the writers come up with a really good “justification” on Aaravos’ part). I’m sure you could also take the story somewhere if Viren and Claudia know from the beginning what the caterpillar has developed into, whether they part ways (or maybe Aaravos traps/disposes of them and they have to fight their way back) or stick together but for now I think them not knowing at first is a bit more interesting for me personally.

1.) Viren and Claudia leave together before Aaraviren hatches and both parties go separate ways without meeting before the cocoon opens (thus Viren and Claudia not knowing about the Viren double in the cocoon and Aaravos not knowing Viren is alive). Aaraviren is pursuing his own agenda whereas Viren and Claudia might both be led on a path of redemption that makes them challenge their ideas about dark magic and elves as they find out about the change around them. I don’t think they’ll just walk back into Katolis or anything, obviously. I imagine they’ll spend their time hiding or as refugees but I don’t think it’s unreasonable that they still somehow get a glimpse at the world around them and notice how elves, humans and dragons start to live in harmony (or at least try to build political alliances). That could break the fundament of their convictions. After all they wanted to keep Katolis/humans safe from the elves and, at least seemingly, there is no more need for that at the moment. They might also (have to) work through their family dynamics as part of their journey to redemption. I can imagine redemption for both is not unlikely because Viren has been betrayed by Aaravos and now the latter appears to be the true threat to humanity. (I would assume that Viren learns about his doppelgänger at some point.) Thus I would assume that Viren, if protecting humans remains his highest ideal, might want to right his wrongs as he feels responsible for the dangers he has set in motion. I think challenging the Viren clone and revealing the truth about Aaravos could be a crucial part of that redemption as he is the only one who knows the truth. And if Aaravos thinks Viren is dead he might not calculate anybody knowing the truth into his plans as the only person who ever did is dead in his mind. For Claudia I think redemption is more on the family and dark magic side. She wanted to keep her family together however the family ended up being torn apart for good at the end of S3. Of course this could either mean she spirals more into darkness (more on that later) but for this possible plot I can imagine that just like Viren’s story line her arc hit its dark peak in season 3 and now she has to work through her own notions of family, dark magic and biases against elves/dragons to truly bring her family back together. She might have to learn that the sacrifices she is making for dark magic are eventually not worth it. Perhaps she’ll somehow get word of Callum mastering the sky arcanum which aids in her change of perspective on dark magic as she comes to realize that there is another way.

2.) This one is very similar to 1.) with the exception that at some point Aaravos finds out about the real Viren being alive (with Viren and Claudia knowing or not knowing about Aaraviren) and at a crucial point in the story manages to manipulate Claudia into doing something for him believing she is doing it for her father. That is, the real Viren and Claudia generally spend their journey together and possibly try to redeem themselves but then Aaravos swoops in (maybe more than once) and makes Claudia do things for him. At some point it is eventually revealed that those orders never came from Viren and the truth comes to light but by then Aaravos’ plan has seemingly come to fruition, perhaps leading to Claudia and Viren trying to undo the results of their deception.

3.) Here Viren and Claudia’s path separate at some point because Aaravos having found out about Viren manages to isolate Claudia and pretending to be her father makes her join him. He leads her down a path even darker by having her helping him to pursue his dark plans while Viren is set up for a path of redemption. Aaraviren however manages to convince Claudia that despite the emerging harmony between human and magical creatures the danger coming from elves and dragons is never really going away and they might subjugate the human kingdoms for good at some point as you can never truyl trust them. Real peace for humans can only be achieved if they can control dragons and elves so the fight has to continue. This also leads Claudia further and further into the depths of dark magic making her sacrifice more and more of herself and driving her towards the despair and darkness that the road of dark magic might eventually and inevitably culminate in. I don’t know if she’ll be saved and redeemed in such a scenario but I still have the feeling that she would be. I can imagine that in the end it is the theme of family that saves her, Viren and Soren banding together to rescue her and bring their family back together while defeating Aaravos who was the one who destroyed their bond before.

[ponett]

Welp... it’s over. After nine years, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is over. I just got done watching the series finale with Anthony and, just like I knew I would, when the credits rolled, I cried my eyes out

I should probably say something, huh. I’ve been sharing thoughts like this mostly on Twitter lately, but I started using Tumblr to blog about MLP, so I don’t think it would be right to post this anywhere else

I have a complicated relationship with MLP:FiM. It’s a show that got really hit or miss after the second season, and it has a fandom so toxic and so full of edgy libertarians that it scared me off from formally participating in fandoms for the rest of my life. But it’s also probably my favorite TV show of all time. There are other shows that are much better written, that have more to say, that are more consistent, even including several other cartoons from the same decade. But I think I’d be lying to myself if I said it wasn’t my favorite show

No other piece of media has had as massive of an impact on my life as My Little Pony

I grew closer to some of my closest high school friends because of our shared enthusiasm for the show. I started PonyPokey with Jake and Derek and made a bunch of bad videos and got invited to be on a wildly disorganized BronyCon panel with Jenny Nicholson in 2012. (We went on stage immediately after Lauren Faust’s panel. I barely said a word due to stage fright.)

After years of being too afraid to share my art online, I started putting more effort into learning digital art so that I could draw ponies. It started out rough, but with the drive to improve, I quickly got better. I started Fluttershy Replies. For the first time, I had an audience. I had people who cared about my work and supported me. Even as times have changed, many of you have been following me since way back then

Around the time I came out as bi in 2012, I got really into MLP shipping. Writing sappy comics and drawing sappy art became an outlet for my years of pent up feelings, and helped me sort out a lot of stuff. My Little Pony also completely changed the views on femininity that had been beaten into my skull since childhood. Suddenly, it wasn’t this strange, alien thing to be afraid of. MLP, at its heart, is a show about how there’s no wrong way to be a girl. That’s an incredibly powerful message. Rarity wasn’t a vapid snob. Fluttershy wasn’t a background character who got made into the butt of the joke. Pinkie wasn’t a ditz. These were characters written to be empathized with. And writing about my own feelings from the perspective of Fluttershy felt... right. It took me a few years to fully process those feelings, but eventually, I realized the truth. I was a trans woman. And a cartoon about horses was the first step on my path to realizing this

In 2013, one of the roughest years of my life, I decided to download RPG Maker on a whim to give myself a distraction. Naturally, my first instinct was to make a game where Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash kiss. What was initially supposed to be a short, Fantastic Game-esque playground of silly little jokes spiraled out of control and became Super Lesbian Horse RPG, a game that I poured my heart and soul into over the course of a year. And then, a couple years later, my desire to preserve the ideas from my copyright-infringing fangame also spiraled out of control, as all my creative projects do, and became SLHRPG’s successor: Super Lesbian Animal RPG. SLARPG isn’t really a reskinned MLP fangame anymore--it’s more like a new game inspired in part by my old project. The story has been drastically rewritten, the characters changed, the levels and gameplay redesigned. Most of the cast of the new game wasn’t in the original project in any form. There’s much, much, much, much, much more new content than old left in the game. And the original game had already strayed so far from the canon anyway. But I’m also not sure it would exist without MLP

I made a bunch of friends online, including close friends I still have to this day. I met the people like Bee and Thomas who I’m still working with on SLARPG. Most importantly, because we both blogged about MLP and had some mutual friends, I met Anthony, the love of my life. We’ve been together for five years now and supported each other through good times and bad. This is the lamest, corniest, stupidest thing I will ever say in my life, but he’s the Rainbow Dash to my Fluttershy

...

So what about the finale itself? (spoilers, obviously)

I have... mixed feelings on the finale. There were some things that really annoyed me in there. But also, like I said, I cried, so I think it’s safe to say they did good overall

I think the thing that stuck in my craw the most was Discord. Which I guess shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve been saying for years now how I hate Discord, how he spits in the face of everything the show stands for. He’s an obnoxious elderly manchild who constantly causes problems on purpose and torments his so-called friends the second they stop paying attention to him. But they have to put up with him and give him infinite second chances, because he’s a god and Celestia said they had to reform him

The overarching plot of the final season is that Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra, Tirek, and Cozy Glow (a Darla Dimple-esque filly villain from season 8) had teamed up with Grogar, a “new” villain taken from G1. While this goes on in the background, Twilight is making her preparations to become Celestia’s successor, as we’d known would be her destiny since the day she got wings six years ago. The villain team-up stuff was genuinely fun, and a highlight of the season for me. But then, in the three-part finale, it’s revealed that Grogar was actually Discord in disguise, and that he’d been intentionally trying to orchestrate a big attack on Twilight’s coronation so that she and her friends could save the day and get a big confidence boost going into her reign as princess. This is like... one of the most bafflingly stupid plot twist of all time. It’s literally the end of the show, and Discord has learned nothing. He’s “nice” now, but he’s still intentionally causing huge problems and putting everyone’s lives in danger to solve his problems. He freed four different villains they’d already defeated just so Twilight could beat them again, and in the process they literally blew up the goddamn castle in Canterlot and nearly killed everyone. And yet... they still forgive him, because they have to

I did, however, think that the last two-part adventure episode was fun overall. It tied a nice bow on much of the series, bringing back a bunch of old friends (including cameos from the movie cast!) to band together and save the day. Of course, in the end, they beat the bad guys with a big rainbow laser and sealed them in a statue. You know, even though a previous season finale was all about how solving their problems with a friendship laser and sealing the villains away never worked. Also, Cozy Glow might be evil, but she’s still literally a child? And now her petrified body is on display in the center of Canterlot? What the fuck????

I’m complaining a lot, but again. It was fun overall. It was nice to have one last big adventure, and to have the mane six reflect on how they’d grown since Twilight moved to Ponyville

...

And then we got the actual final episode. And boy did this one hit me HARD

I’m so glad that they ended on a quieter episode about the main cast’s friendships, because that’s what the show is actually about. The two-part adventures to save Equestria every season are fun, but that’s not the real show. We all came back every week for Twilight and her friends

There are things I can complain about here, too. Spike being a buff adult dragon with the voice of a child is fucked up. I’m still not used to seeing Twilight be Celestia’s size. But more than anything, I was always worried that we’d get a Harry Potter ending, where all the characters are paired off into arbitrary marriages so they can all have kids. Thankfully, this didn’t really happen. The only one who had a kid was Pinkie, who apparently got married to Cheese Sandwich (Weird Al’s character) at some point. Like, they literally shared two episodes together, with no hint of romance? But then they got married and had a kid off-screen??? What the fuck???? A lot of people also think that Fluttershy ended up with Discord, and I know I’m massively biased against that ship, but... I mean, they teased the FlutterCord shippers, but there wasn’t really any actual textual evidence that they were any closer than they had been previously. Y’all weirdos who ship Fluttershy with an obnoxious elderly man can interpret that as being “canon” if you want, I guess, but it’s not

The other relationship that shocked everyone in the finale was Applejack and Rainbow Dash, who... appear to be a couple? It’s definitely hinted at. I have... very, very mixed feelings about this. I mean, okay, obivously I’m the big FlutterDash fangirl. But I think AppleDash is cute, too! The problem is that, like... they’ve barely interacted in years? Like, they had a lot of episodes together in the first two seasons, but then the writers barely ever had them interact past that point. I can’t even remember when the last time we got an actual episode focusing on them was. And no, the one where Rainbow takes Granny Smith to pony Vegas doesn’t count

Like... yeah, it’s cute. It’s a nice gesture. Lyra and Bon Bon getting married in the background was also cute. But we can do so, so much better in 2019. We have so many explicitly canon lesbian couples in cartoons. Couples that actually kissed, or got married, or showed feelings for each other. Rainbow and AJ barely even fucking talked to each other in the final few seasons. I dunno, it just feels very hollow to me. Even the Equestria Girls crew admitting they were pushing RariJack felt more substantial to me, because at least they were given on-screen chemistry and lots of canon interaction

But in the end, complaints aside, the finale was about Twilight moving back to Canterlot, and worrying that her friendships would fade because of it. Honestly, I think this is what the finale of the show always would’ve been. It was the perfect story to end on. And boy, it hit really close to home

And then the last song happens, reflecting on how things have changed, but how they’re all still friends. And we see all the other friends they made along the way. And the camera zooms out, and the book from the opening of the very first episode closes, bringing the entire nine-year saga full circle

And then I started sobbing really hard in Anthony’s arms

...

I dunno. I just got done nitpicking a lot, but I still think that the last episode was a good and very emotional ending for the show

I’m going to miss this show dearly. I know it will be back in a new form, and that the leaks indicate that it’ll still star slightly different versions of the Mane Six. I’m also used to shows like this getting rebooted. Hasbro cartoons are honestly lucky to last past three seasons. FiM, on the other hand, got over 200 episodes, a theatrical film, a few specials, some shorts, a bunch of comics (which I still need to read), and a spinoff human AU series that was also really great. There’s no shortage of content, and I’m sure I’ll be returning to the series for years to come. I’m also glad that the show managed to go out on a high note

But still. It was a constant presence in my life for nearly nine years. Even as the quality got really hit or miss, even as they took the premise in strange directions, even as the crew of the show grew more and more dominated by men, it was still a show I could rely on to always be there, 26 episodes a year. I’ll miss it. I hope what comes next is just as good, if not even better. I also hope it’s gayer

I was going to end my ask blog, Fluttershy Replies, around the time the show ended. I’m not sure if I’ll do that just yet. I don’t know. I think that might be a bit much for me to process emotionally. Too many doors closing in my life in quick succession. But I do want to do more with it. These characters will be special to me for the rest of my life

I mean shit, I haven’t even drawn StarTrix yet. I’ve still got a lot of work to do with these horses, folks

[my-deer-friend]

I love the amount of time and engagement you are putting into your reading! Combining the core text with an exploration of the primary sources is an excellent way both to learn more about the topic, and to evaluate the interpretation of those sources by the author. Like any historian, Massey has his own biases, opinions and perspectives, and you don’t have to agree with all of the conclusions he comes to.

Let’s start with Francis Kinloch! John and Francis probably knew each other back in South Carolina (based on the fact that John and Francis’s sister Mary Esther were acquainted). They overlapped in Geneva for about three months – Francis arrived in about May 1774, and John left for London at the beginning of August – and moved in the same social circles; there were many English travellers who passed through the city, including dukes, earls and other notables, and a group of expats who had taken up residence there. It’s clear from their subsequent letters that John and Francis deepened their friendship during that time, and it certainly has a homoromantic dimension, but there is no evidence that points me to believing they had a sexual relationship (not that this is the kind of thing you’d write down, of course). Their letters just don’t seem to reflect that kind of intimacy, in my evaluation. I’m also not personally a proponent of the “breakup letter/rebound sex” theory, because I don’t think Francis was as central a figure in John’s life as the theory requires (certainly not by 1776), and I don’t think that motivation was needed to push John into Martha’s arms.

John was a frequent visitor to the Manning home, and it seems that he became close friends with Martha – to such a degree that it looked, per Massey's research, like he was courting Martha. And perhaps he was! But there are a few things that suggest to me that he wasn’t. In John’s social class, spouses were chosen based on a range of factors, both emotional and practical – but neither seems to be strongly evident here.

Considering the sentiments John expressed after their marriage (as little as has been preserved), it doesn’t seem like he was deeply in love with or concerned for Martha; even the letter he writes to Henry on the day of his wedding only serves to apologise for adding Martha to the family. This isn't framed as a love match.

From a practical perspective, he certainly could have made a “better” match if he was choosing purely based on socioeconomic factors, and it would not have made sense to marry an English girl given the political situation at the time.

I don’t agree with your comment that “the standards of the time encouraged him to sleep with her” – I think the opposite is true. Extramarital sex could be very damaging to a young woman’s reputation and marriage prospects, and could obviously result in unwanted pregnancies (bad for the mother and child alike). It was also against the religious and moral standards that John supposedly upheld. It wasn’t uncommon, but it was not encouraged.

Beyond that, it’s important to remember that people in the mid-to-late 18th century didn’t have the same conceptions of gender and sexuality as we do, so even though John likely felt same-sex desire, that on its own would not have prevented him from exploring heterosexual relationships. That doesn’t make him any less contextually queer, and we don’t need to erase Martha to maintain that interpretation. I certainly don’t think she coerced him into sex, or that social pressure drove him to it. The likeliest explanation is that they both wanted to, and they messed up, and then dealt with the consequences in the least damaging way. I’ve shared some of my other thoughts about Martha here. I do however think that part of the explanation for John’s later emotional distance from her (assuming they had genuinely been friends before) had to do with resentment about what happened.

Oh, I'm after reading some letters you recommended me to read from Henry Laurens Papers! Thanks to this reading his bio is much better because I actually know how MUCH pressure Henry Laurens put on his oldest son. 

John was constantly reminded about Virtue and poor boy was so scared of losing his father acceptance, he letters to him are so heartbreaking and you can feel how unhappy he was with some choices to make his father HAPPY.

I'd be very interested in what specifically you found heartbreaking, and which choices you're referring to, if you'd like to share!

In either case, I want to encourage you to resist a one-sided interpretation of letters like that and keep the broader context in mind.

Yes, Henry was a strict father – but he was not vastly more strict than others at the time. As a single parent, he had the duty of ensuring his children would be set up for success in the world that they lived in. The things that he encouraged John to do – live frugally, choose a financially viable career, build a positive public reputation, practice the virtues and behaviours of a gentleman, prioritise his family – were very much in John's interest, and importantly, John aspired to many of those things too.

Henry's advice and directions lined up with societal expectations for young men at their time. You can certainly make the case that he held John to a higher standard than other sons in their orbit, but he also gave John a lot of freedom to make his own choices – such as in his education and his career – and trusted him to make those decisions for Harry and Jemmy too. Again, whether it was entirely fair to give him that degree of responsibility is something we can discuss, but we also shouldn't ignore that John was largely equal to the challenges, and he had support as well (financially from his father, and more generally from his uncle and aunt, the Mannings, and other friends of the Laurens family).

The other thing to remember is that, from 1776 onwards, Henry believed there was a very real chance that he would be killed for taking part in the American rebellion, and his entire fortune lost – so it would be up to John to play a pivotal role in supporting his family financially and societally. Was it unfair? Probably yes. Was it their reality at the time, despite whatever Henry or John may have wanted? Also yes. In either case, John made his own decision and returned to America against Henry's wishes, and Henry supported his choice, even though he disagreed with it.

I'm not trying to say that Henry was a perfect father; like any parent, he had his own biases, ideas about proper conduct, "old-fashioned" notions, and – because he was a product of his society's norms – expected his children to obey his instructions (at least before they came of age). At the same time, he encouraged John to make the most consequential decisions for himself. I don't think Henry would have been "happy" if John had made himself entirely miserable for the sake of gratifying him; equally, Henry would not have been a good father for his time if he'd just let John do whatever he wanted, and neglected to give him a framework of virtues and morals to live by. We need to keep in mind which standards we are judging a set of actions by.

[rwby-redux]

Deconstruction

Worldbuilding: Semblances I

Remember in the Worldbuilding: Overview when I called Semblances magical? Technically speaking, that’s not actually true. The fact that I have to even qualify that statement tells you just how much of a headache RWBY’s magic system—excuse me, pseudo-magic system—is in practice. Unlike the last topic (Aura) where I focused on just one critical flaw, today we’re going to cover as many of those flaws as we can. Given the huge number of talking points we’ll be discussing, Semblances is going to be split into two parts.

You might want to get comfortable; we’re going to be here for a while.

Let’s first start by establishing what, according to canon, a Semblance actually is. If Aura is the manifestation of the soul, then a Semblance is the form that manifestation takes. Broadly speaking, a Semblance is a skill or ability that transcends the normal biological limits of what a person is capable of—a superpower that’s uniquely-tailored to its user. Despite taking on a wide array of forms and functions, all Semblances share six basic traits:

A Semblance draws upon Aura as its source of power. When this fuel source is depleted, a person can no longer use their Semblance, and must wait for their Aura to regenerate before it can be used again.

The specific ability or nature of one’s Semblance is alleged to be an expression of the user’s personality/character/soul.

Overuse of a Semblance can adversely affect a person and cause physical side effects, such as fatigue [1], headaches [2], or fainting [3].

Semblances can interact with Dust in such a way that their skills are augmented, resulting in the temporary acquisition of new subskills or secondary characteristics.

Through training and regular usage, Semblances can gradually become stronger or more advanced.

The intensity of certain emotions, such as stress, panic, despair, or rage, can cause a person to subconsciously activate their Semblance.

Your first reaction when reading this list might’ve been, “Oh, you mean like the Quirks in My Hero Academia.” Now, I’ve never personally watched the show or read the manga, but after briefly consulting the Wiki page I can safely confirm that yes, Semblances are very similar to Quirks. However, given my lack of familiarity with My Hero Academia, I’m going to avoid drawing too many comparisons between the two. This is partly because I don’t want to provide incorrect commentary on a franchise I know little about. The other reason? The longer I read the Wiki page on Quirks, the more embittered I become toward Semblances and the wasted potential they have by comparison. I’m already biased; I don’t need any help in that arena, thanks.

I think the best way to discuss all of the various flaws with Semblances is to break this topic into two parts, and deal with the meta and in-lore aspects separately.

Meta, Production, and Development

When I started doing research for this topic I went on the RWBY Wiki to track down sources and dates, as one typically does when preparing to excavate a salt mine. I knew what a Semblance was, but I decided that, for the sake of empirical evidence, that I needed to have a reference for that definition. (And a good line of defense against potential critics. It’s hard to argue with primary sources.) Fans can give a definition when prompted, but I’m willing to bet most of them couldn’t name the episode where we first got that information. That’s all right; I couldn’t either. In fact, the more I thought about it, the weirder it seemed that I couldn’t pinpoint the exact episode, let alone the volume, where Semblances are first explained. So I did some digging.

Here’s what I found:

The first time Aura is explained on-screen is Volume 1, Episode 06: “The Emerald Forest - Part 1.” This exposition is delivered to us by Pyrrha, whose explanation serves as a learning moment for us, the viewers, and Jaune, the audience-surrogate character.

The first time the word Semblance is mentioned (not explained, mentioned) is Volume 1, Episode 14: “Forever Fall - Part 2.” Take a moment to let that sink in: we’re fourteen episodes into the series, and despite seeing multiple characters use their Semblances on-screen, we still haven’t been told what these powers are. I think some viewers were able to extrapolate what our cast was doing based on a sense of genre-savviness, but that’s really bad. As a writer, your job is to find a way to organically explain the core aspects of your story. I know that CRWBY tried to use Jaune to fulfill this role (but why that ultimately failed to work is a discussion for another day), but even then, it shouldn’t take fourteen episodes to start addressing major worldbuilding elements.

At this point you must be wondering, okay, so if Aura didn’t get its first proper introduction until episode six, and Semblances were only namedropped at episode fourteen, then when were they properly explained? At least somewhere in Volume 1, right?

Would you like to know the answer?

The first time Semblances were formally explained was in World of Remnant, Episode 4: “Aura.” The fourth episode of this spin-off series debuted on November 14th, 2014. The fourth World of Remnant episode aired a month after Volume 2 ended. To give you some context, the very first episode of the main series aired on July 18, 2013, and the first episode of Volume 3 was released on October 24, 2015.

It took twenty-eight episodes, a runtime of 04:26:04, and a full year before we finally had an answer. An answer that was delivered in a spin-off series meant exclusively to supplement crucial worldbuilding and lore.

Do you see how fucking insane that is? How badly do you have to fail at writing to not explain to your audience one of the fundamental aspects of your story? Not only does this not make sense from a writing perspective, but it makes no sense from a development or production standpoint, either. At the time, Kerry Shawcross was an editor for Red vs. Blue Season 9, while Miles Luna was the writer for the Red vs. Blue miniseries Where There's a Will, There's a Wall, and co-writer for Red vs. Blue Season 10. While Monty Oum himself wasn’t necessarily a writer, he was part of a three-man team that together did have a background in writing and editing. (Mind you, neither of them are necessarily good writers, but it’s still better than nothing.)

To reiterate: There were three creative leads working on this project. Three. How is it that none of them, at any point during production, noticed this massive flaw with their story?

I don’t work for Rooster Teeth (obviously), and I’m therefore not privy to any of the decisions that were made behind the scenes. Whether the focus was more on animating RWBY than emphasizing the worldbuilding, whether the lighthearted tone made the team think that exposition wasn’t as important as being entertaining, whether there were deadline crunches and budgeting constraints that limited the quality of the final product.

While we can’t decisively say why this is the case, we can see how these choices had major consequences for RWBY’s plot—not just in retrospect, but going forward as well. Next time in Part 2, we’ll cover topics that focus more on the lore of Semblances than the storytelling nitpicks, and discuss how those oversights impacted the series.

-

[1] Volume 3, Episode 12: “End of the Beginning.” During Salem’s monologue, Glynda can be seen using her Semblance to try and reassemble a storefront in Vale’s shopping district. Eventually, she tires from overuse of her Semblance, and the building collapses back into debris while Glynda hunches over gasping.

[2] Volume 3, Episode 7: “Beginning of the End.” Immediately after Yang is framed for attacking Mercury, Emerald complains about a headache from casting her Semblance on two people simultaneously.

[3] Volume 5, Episode 14: “Haven’s Fate.” When Yang claims the Relic of Knowledge and returns from the Vault, Emerald conjures an illusion of Salem. Performing her Semblance on nine different people at the same time consumes what little energy she had left, and causes her to pass out. Hazel has to carry her while he and Mercury flee from the battle.

[tlblah]

Ok so pausing the reread (I’m at the part where Percy just got his prophecy) but like so I’ve been in this fandom forever. I kind of leave when there’s huge discord. (I’ve grown up with a lot of different fandoms and it gets to be intense so I don’t really interact) and I know we’re at the point where we are separating the content from the author while also acknowledging the failures that come from said authors (like Riordan sticking to stereotypes instead of writing characters who deal and break those stereotypes, the current fandom discussion) but my question when I started reread is specifically about the Big Three.

Like I understand that as we read this book we are naturally made to think that Poseidon is the best of the three bc he actually seems to acknowledge Percy and in his own way be a good father to him. But I started to think about the pact that was brought up and it’s origins.

Its stated that WW2 was Zeus and Poseidon against Hades and obviously we’re supposed to infer that Hades was Germany and Zeus and Poseidon are England and the US or whatever “good” nations you want to pick. But what my brain caught on was that my views on said gods are different at the moment.

Zeus is supposed to be the ruler right, but he acts like a little bitch, cheats on his wife, is always suspicious of people and in general doesn’t sound like a great leader. As an American I can’t help but confer him with our current dumpster fire of a president and government. Also Zeus is the truest fuck boy of them all. So I can’t really see him as this paragon that he’s supposed to be. I see him as this fraud.

Hades, on the other hand, is supposed to be bad, he’s intended to be this baleful brother jealous of his siblings and the lot he was given. But of course over the years we’ve all basically decided Hades is the soft one compared to his queen of a wife Persephone and as a whole have seen him not as this figure if evil but of a different realm. People are scared of darkness bc they don’t know it and don’t understand it but it doesn’t mean it’s evil. Hades has just been shaped differently bc his lot and people who don’t understand that realm judge him without learning.

(Poseidon is just Poseidon bc Riordan keeps him as this perfect figure who would be an amazing father if only he wasn’t a god. Which I mean false but I haven’t been able to wrangle him as much as I’ve been thinking about Zeus and Hades so we’ll come back to him later)

So I guess what I’m realizing is that distance and growth changes how you see figure heads and events. Bc as I read about the pact and WW2 through the books premise I couldn’t help challenge my initial reading as a 13 year old in like maybe 2007. When I read it Zeus and Poseidon were on the “good” side of the war, and Hades was obviously meant to be Germany, the evil side. But now as a 26 year old in 2020, my brain wanted to flip that and put Zeus on the bad side.

WW2 was hell. Millions of Jewish people were killed in an atrocious genocide. But from where I’m standing now Zeus represents the worst of the beaucrats, who only care about money and power. And part of me sides with Hades, the one person who has to take in all of the dead, these lost and extinguished souls and I think his children would have rose up and fought to end the needless killings. They would have gone up against Zeus and Poseidon to keep them from extending their power over people and trying to shape the world to their “perfect image”.

I.e my brain wanted to flip and put hades as the good countries and Zeus as Germany.

Maybe that just because of how I’m feeling in this current pandemic. When the government had gone to crap and precious lives are being lost for no good reason and I can’t seem to make Hades the bad guy but I can say fuck you to Zeus bc he just feels like he’s be the one that the corrupt men in power would pray to. Because the people who would look to Zeus and see someone powerful would be the ones currently trying to save not live but the economy. While I currently look at Zeus as a failure of politicians and the beginning of greed and fuckboy-erie, I don’t look to Hades in the negative ways that is implied at the beginning of the book.

I mean I never looked to Hades as an evil god, at least once we got to further learn the character as well as see him through the eyes of Nico as well. I guess I’m currently looking at him from our current perspective. We never had to really worry and pay attention to the government just as Hades did living in the underworld. But now that the fuckery that is the earth is reaching into our daily lives and personally affecting us, (people not wearing masks, rights being taken away, ACAB) we can not stay quiet and apart from the world. Hades has to make his presence and his power known because he is god of the underworld and he won’t stand by while people who were not scheduled to die flood his kingdom as a result of Zeus’s idiot followers

I mean obviously the Greek gods aren’t real. They’re an amalgamation of ideas and principles but it’s still interesting to realize that we are at a turning point in time. And in turn a turning point of how I am reading these gods. I am rethink many aspects of this series that I just accepted as a child and debate the ideas and principles that were completely different over a decade ago.

It feels weird to even think that we are living through the fall of Rome but it truly feels that way

*edit*

I thought about Poseidon’s possible current role and he is either siding with Zeus and basically the republicans who are just going along bc they think they’ll benefit. I’m not exactly sold on this idea. The larger part of me wants to cast possiden as the countries that have a hold on the covid pandemic and look at the US like we’re Florida. Which means they’d side with Hades which makes more sense bc Poseidon has always been the one to challenge Zeus and if Zeus won’t listen pull him off the throne. Ok I’m calling it rn is Hades and Poseidon vs Zeus and I actually like that idea of Poseidon. He’s the oceans, the one thing that covers the earth and connects it all. He wouldnt represent countries turning inwards and abandoning the rest of the world. The ocean is open waters and free if borders. It’s perfect representation of this day an age. Ugh tell me I haven’t been biased into thinking Poseidon is better than the rest. No you know what Hades and Poseidon are equals. It’s only Zeus who thinks he’s better than anyone.

[kallypsowrites]

Game of thrones: Conquest and Rebellion

I’m a happy camper this Christmas as I finally got Game of Thrones season 7 for myself. And I was surprised when it came with this beautiful little DVD that contains an over 40 minute history of the Targaryens in Westeros, narrated by several of the characters in Game of Thrones including: Viserys, Varys, Euron, Peytr Baelish, Sansa, and Jaime. I say characters and not actors because it is clearly supposed to be from the perspective of the characters and what they have learned about the history of the Targaryens.

Now, I was intrigued to watch this because I am actually midway through a big ol’ post on unreliable history in Fire and Blood. The basic thesis is that by telling the history of his world through the eyes of someone in that world, he makes it unreliable and biased and this is very much by design. I have my ideas about what is exagerated vs what is real in Fire and Blood, but I wanted to see how this video compared. Especially since it contains what the SHOW views as the most important notes in the Targaryen conquest.

And boy did it confirm my suspicions about unreliable history. In fact, hearing individual characters bring in their bias illustrated my thesis perfectly. But let’s talk about some of the highlights. Because I was surprised to see how the Targaryens were represented her.

1. Viserys suggests that the Targaryens may have left Old Valyria because of a court mishap and not the prophesy from ‘The Dreamer’. I have had my suspicions about some of the “prophetical” motivation behind the Targaryen conquest, because in large part it seemed like stories written to justify Aegon’s conquest. Like it’s his “destiny”. However, I never thought to question the idea of the dreamer foreseeing the doom of Valyria. Now, if this was from any other character’s narration I might call it unreliable and an attempt to discredit the Targaryens but this is Viserys, “number one Targaryen fanboy”, “my family is the best and like GODS among MEN” Targaryen. Even he thinks that perhaps the vision is just a story. At the very least, the vision wasn’t super clear as the Targaryens left a full twelve years before the Doom. Already the show seems to be calling attention to the fact that the Targaryens are just like everyone else.

2. This continues with the implication that Aegon conquered for resources and knew he could win because of dragons. This is also Viserys’ implication. He also makes a statement about Aegon “teaching the squabbling families the meaning of greatness” and it sounds very villainy. Again. This is Viserys who later on calls Maegar the cruel, “the wise” and says the title of cruel was slander! Viserys is 100% team Targaryen and yet he does not begin to make Aegon’s intentions sound noble. Even though the Targaryen history books are FILLED with that kind of thing. Viserys also calls them “strangers” to Westeros which follows the narrative of this being an invasion. in fact the next section is even TITLED ‘invasion’

After this, we switch to Varys’ narration. As a narrator, he’s probs the most trustworthy as he is the most neutral. And HE adds in the suggestion that Aegon used the hands of the envoy sent to him by Argilac the arrogant were just a PRETEXT for the conquest he’d been planning for a long time. He wanted to rule the seven kingdoms and was just looking for an excuse to attack. He also suggests that Argilac the arrogant was surpassed by Aegon in arrogance. Not a great picture painted of Aegon.

3. “Before he was done, the rivers fields and skies would turn red” -- Varys on Aegon the conqueror. Continues to speak of this man like a villain. in sharp contrast to the ‘noble conqueror’ painted in Fire and Blood. Speaking of which, Aegon is the one who comes up with the words ‘Fire and Blood’ according to this video, which definetily makes him seem like he was hoping for some casual mass murder.

4. Obviously, Harren the Black and Argilac the Arrogant sucked. Totally not coming to their defense. But how are their deaths portrated. Well, Euron is given the chance to describe the death of Harren and he is CLEARLY turned on by the destruction of his ancestors which is a bad sign. It’s description is horrifying and the animation is dark. Obviously if Euron likes it, its supposed to be kind of freaky.

Argilac, however, is given a heroic final battle seeming almost noble. Orys Baratheon, the most humanized of all the conquerors, seems to respect him enough to take his sigil and words “out of respect”. We’ll talk more about how the characters are drawn later, but there’s a big difference between Orys and Aegon.

5. Jaime describes the field of fire and he himself looks VERY MUCH like Lorren Lannister. He stresses that Aegon had “no mercy”. But its no surprise that he hates Targaryens cause they have a bad history. But still, the Field of Fire is shot like a horrifying war scene and the Targaryens are again depicted as the villain. Thousands return home as “scarred monsters”.

Favorite line “Aegon had a fetish for collecting swords”.

6. Sansa narrates the bits about House Stark and House Stark is indisputidly depicted as heroes. Now, this isn’t surprising. Sansa is loyal to her house. But she implies that the north was different than the other kingdoms because they were focused on survival not power. There is focus for a lot of time on the white walkers and how it is a Stark problem to deal with and they are a greater threat than dragons.

She puts emphasis on how Starks are willing to make alliances for survival, regadless of pride as well. She seems to respect Torrhen Stark’s decision to kneel saying ‘he had no choice’. Aegon was offering a very ‘kneel or die’ message after all. The Starks would have died if they did not bow. But their swords are still taken for the throne!

The most ominous bit is this:

“The swords Aegon took from them were not twisted or mangled” - Sansa

“Yet” - Viserys, very ominously

What an ominous thing to throw in there Viserys!

7. Most unsettling display of Targaryen villainy happens in the Eyrie, narrated by Littlefinger. Queen Arryn arrives to see that Visenya is with her son, next to her dragon. Visenya doesn’t say it, but she is fully threatening the boy. You can see it by her smile which is just...oof. It’s scary. She clearly intends to kill him if his mother doesn’t give the crown. She has “no choice” and Littlefinger describes him as a “poor boy”. Visenya is clear villain in this. This is in HUGE contrast to the two women apparently relating and connecting with each other in Fire and Blood.

8. Viserys mocks the “religious” reasons for old town’s surrender suggesting that they knelt because otherwise everyone would die. This once again undercuts the idea that the septon saw some grand purpose for Aegon which is suggested in Fire and Blood. The septon is just afraid, again, according to Viserys the number one Targaryen fanboy. Bonus: calls the north savages because Targaryens are better than everyone~~ He even calls the Targaryens the "Greatest dynasty ever.” when Aegon is crowned.

9. But after Aegon’s victory, the neutral Varys comes in to remind us of the Dorne failure. Rather than making Rhaenys seem unflapable and invincible as Fire and Blood did, Varys suggested that the yellow toad of Dorne SCARED Rhaenys. And later on, of course, Rhaenys gets taken down. Dorne really is painted as the heroic underdogs of this scene. and emphasis is placed on the fact that Aegon and Visenya set every city on fire except sunspear. If there HAD been people there, they would all be dead. Fire and Blood indeed.

10. We skip right from the conquest to the Dance of Dragons.

“With no enemies left they started fighting each other.” - Viserys

This defs doesn’t sound like the centuries of peace and prosperity that Dany talked about. This video is focused ENTIRELY on the wars of the Targaryens and not the good things or building of infrastructure. No mention of Jahaerys the concilitator at all. Instead we focus on Aegon, Maegar, the Dance, Aegon the Unworthy and the Mad King. All the very worst Targaryens. And there are lots of good things the Targaryens did! But instead of focusing on that, the show focuses on the war, which means they know that Dany’s line about “centuries of peace” is wrong.

Bonus, we have more of Viserys arguing for blood purity and that Targaryens are SPECIAL and that they would have been fine if Aegon didn’t legitimize so many dirty half breed bastards.

11. The greatest Targaryen threat, however, is madness (according to Jaime who saw the Mad King first hand). We bring up that line again: “Every time a Targaryen is born the gods flip a coin”

“We put up with Aerys hoping Rhaegar would be better but then he also proved mad when he took Lyanna Stark”

This does not place Rhaegar as the sane, good sibling most people do. Instead, it also paints him in a negative light. Which, this is Jaime, so take it with a grain of salt. But he actually never hated Rhaegar so yeah...

12. Jaime is so bitter about Ned condemning him and it’s kinda funny. I love Nikolaj narration

“I saw what Ned Stark couldn’t. Robert was ashamed of the bodies of the children... and more ashamed at his relief. Glorious heroes didn’t kill children. They simply didn’t punish their murderers” - Jaime being smart with one of my fave lines.

He clearly sees things as they are. He doesn’t like the Targaryens but he also doesn’t elevate Robert as a god. Jaime doesn’t believe in heroes and it shows here.

13. Then we end with a particularly ominous note.

“One day I’ll return and repay all traitors with the only coin my family knows. Fire and blood” - Viserys. 

These are the last words in the video. A threat. It really does not paint the Targaryens as tragic characters pushed out of their rightful throne.

And this is where I want to talk about the character drawings. Every pose from the original three dragons (Aegon and sisters) is the most villainous thing in the world and the music behind their conquest is intense and dark. Their faces are often lowered but with their eyes glaring up and shrouded in shadow. Their smiles are sharp. Their body language is arrogant. It is victims of the conquest like Lorren and Torrhen who are given more humanized designs.

On the Targaryen side of things, the most humanized design belongs to Orys Baratheon who has much kinder eyes and a more open expression. And the there’s Viserys and Daenerys at the end who look like scared children more than anything. But the Targaryen dynasty that is their birth right doesn’t appear to start out on a great foot.

This kinda all backs up my point that if Daenerys wants to break the wheel, she will have to reject and correct the legacy of her family. The show clearly does not view Aegon as a great hero. So if they mean for Daenerys to be a hero, I hope they have her recognize the history and take steps to correct it (maybe even destroy the iron throne, plz?) And if she doesn’t recognize her history or tries to emulate Aegon, she could be headed down a bad path.

I love the Targaryen family because, like lots of my favorite Westeros families, they are SCREWED UP and have lots of interesting characters, and I look forward to exploring them more in my Fire and Blood post. But if anything, this video just backs up my thesis about unreliable history and what Dany will have to do if she wants to be a good ruler. Break that wheel! It was forged in fire and blood!

[sandersstudies]

Okay, so I said for 1,500 followers I would rant about my ship opinions. Want to make clear from the start that if you disagree with me, you are still totally cool and valid. Got it? Okay, let’s go.

This is a pretty long post so I’ll put some of it under a cut. 

Analogical Okay, so obviously “My Negative Thinking” sparked the interest in this one, and Moving On only strengthened it. I can see this one being romantic or platonic, and I like both, but prefer platonic mostly because I see logan as a bit paternal. This is a relationship that could be a two-way street. We’ve seen Logan be a bit protective of Virgil (”Virgil, are you okay?” in Moving On GETS me), and I think Virgil would also be very protective of Logan. The biggest calming thing for anxiety is always logic, but sometimes logic needs to learn to trust gut feelings. Whether romantic or platonic (or even paternal), I see Virgil going to Logan when he needs a clearer perspective, and I think Logan has a great amount of respect for Virgil - Patton and Roman are impulsive and  removed from reality, while Virgil seems like he could understand Logan’s point of view. Overall, a loPlatonic 9/10, Romantic 7.5/10.vely pair. 

Platonic 9/10; they understand each other; somehow both are the protective Mom friend at the same time.

Romantic 7.5/10; both would have trouble expressing their “feelings” but if they both learned to communicate it would be beautiful.

Logicality  I’ve liked these two together since the beginning. Unfortunately, I think that lately we’ve seen that these two have some problems they need to work through first, especially on Logan’s end. I think that logic and morality/emotion are much more essential to the human mind than anxiety and creativity, and I think that Logan and Patton reflect that. A lot of people write pining/flirtatious Logicality, but I prefer that “old married couple” domestic aesthetic. I think Logan and Patton are incredibly protective of each other, but that leads to some barriers they need to break down. Logan is scared to be silly in front of Patton because Patton needs reigning in by somebody who is 100% logical, but sometimes Logan takes his authority and logic so seriously that he isn’t considerate of Patton. Meanwhile. Patton is lovingly pressuring Logan to admit that sometimes being silly is fun and important, because he wants Logan to be honest and unabashed about enjoying things. Unfortunately, they’re pushing each other in opposite directions. 

Platonic 8/10; this is probably the most romantic-leaning ship I have, so I’m biased.

Romantic 9/10; damn I love them so much but they have some communication issues to work out to be healthy. 

Logince Never seen these guys as a romantic ship. That said, I think the potential for a partnership is incredible. They’re a classic brains/brawn pair and I see them in an amazing fraternal/platonic relationship. Rather than enemies to lovers, these two are rivals to partners. If I was going to call any two sides each others’ “bros,” it would be these two. Logan is very lawful while Roman is very chaotic, but I think we see in “Fitting In” and “Why Do We Get Out of Bed in the Morning?” that these two have a lot in common: both are short-tempered, determined, resourceful, ambitious, strong leaders (maybe even a little self-righteous, arrogant, and stubborn). These two are both very dominant compared to Patton and Virgil - they both want to be in charge, and I think that would be detrimental in a romantic relationship. However, I think that as friends this would be friendly competition, pushing each other to be better. It’s another classic dynamic to see two characters who see each other as “the one to beat” but then realize that they could beat EVERYONE if they would just work together. 

Platonic 8/10; still some stuff they need to work out, but once they do they’ll be unstoppable.

Romantic 3/10; I just don’t see it, and I think their personalities wouldn’t be good for a romantic relationship because the communication isn’t there.

Moxiety Like Logince, this has never been a romantic ship for me. Patton is just obviously coded as “Dad” or “Best Friend” in every interaction BUT the thing that really gets me is that Virgil is just as protective of Patton as Patton is of him, which makes sense. Our Anxiety is in place not just to protect our physical body, but also our feelings, and Patton is Thomas’ heart. I feel like Patton and Virgil have each others’ full trust, and “Can Lying be Good?” really made this evident. When “Patton” acted strange, Virgil didn’t think “my friend is doing a bad thing,” he thought “this isn’t my friend.” He knows Patton that well. With Patton learning to accept his feelings, I think he and Virgil are huge supports for each other. I honestly think that while Roman and Logan were having drama for the last two videos, Patton and Virgil have just been having Best Friend time. Heck, is anything softer than these two? Villain-coding a character and then revealing their vulnerability by having them befriend the softest of puffballs is adorable. 

Platonic 10/10; they’re BEST FRIENDS you guys, look at them. Wouldja just LOOK at it?

Romantic 4/10; they have the communication and trust, but I think they’re so much better for each other as best friends. 

Prinxiety Ah, classic enemies to friends to lovers. I’ve never been a huge stan for this ship, but heck if it isn’t cute. It’s Tumblr goth bf and Instagram prep bf. I think their love languages would be very different, but if they could learn to communicate and respect their differences, the potential is there. I think that lately we’ve seen effort on both sides for these guys to include each other. Roman’s been kinder about his nicknames, which is a good start. Also, let’s face it: Virgil’s face when Roman changes in to his 2.0 outfit screams “I am gay.” I think no matter what, these two will bicker a bit, but it could range from something that’s an actual problem all the way to something more endearing; imagine an hour on the couch going back and forth about which Pixar movie is the best because neither will relent. Also, there’s something to be said for anxiety both encouraging and stifling creativity, and creativity both causing and relieving anxiety. There’s delicate balances there to be explored, especially when creativity, in Roman’s case, is loud and presentational. Romantic elements aside, I also like seeing these two as annoying brothers who deeply love each other but simultaneously piss each other off.  

Platonic 6/10; not my favorite, but bickering brothers or friends is still a very nice possibility. 

Romantic 7/10; come on, guys, it’s a fandom classic, and the enemies to lovers dynamic is just so fun.

Royality Excuse me but this is the most under-appreciated ship in this whole fandom. Two honest good boys who are filled to the brim with love? Two dudes who would 100% have compatible love languages? Two guys who would spoil each other with affection and tiny gifts? Hell yes hell yes hell yes. Romance and emotion go together, guys. These two would have more PDA than any other pairing because embarrassment? How dare anyone be embarrassed by TRUE LOVE? The only possible concern I can think of is that Patton is very giving while Roman is very egoistic, but I think we’ve seen that both of them would be very giving to a romantic partner. These two would be all about dramatic displays of affection, but they also would have their peaceful moments when they need them. Mostly I just see them creating things for each other and never letting anybody forget how much they love each other.

Platonic 8/10; good stuff, but this ship is very romantic-leaning in my eyes. However, a brotherly relationship is also an incredible idea. 

Romantic 9/10; as long as Patton takes care of himself and Roman learns to care about others, these two would be adorable.

LAMP (I’m assuming a LAMP where all four are in a relationship with the other three, but I know that there are other versions as well) I’ll be up front and admit that I prefer pairings to poly relationships in my ships, but let’s face it: LAMP is adorable. It has all the benefits of the other ships, but with third and fourth parties to balance out some of the cons. These guys are famILY and they are, in canon, the only “people” in each others’ lives. I don’t have much to say because this ship is essentially everything I’ve said before about the other ships. 

Platonic 10/10; famILY

Romantic 6/10; good stuff, but I have a personal preference for pairings; still great because they all complete each other.

Deceit Ships I’m not putting down people who like these ships; that’s your business. However, I’ve seen too many people get hurt, REALLY hurt, by dishonesty in their relationships to support these. Even if Deceit isn’t 100% a villain, which I can see, it still isn’t healthy to put a character who is all about lying into a relationship. The most important things in any relationship are honest communication and trust, and those are both things that aren’t compatible with Deceit. That said, I’ve seen some morally grey fics and headcanons about Deceit where he has some interactions with the other sides I quite like. Let’s face it, one way or another the other sides are stuck with Deceit, and I think he at least has the potential to be something other than an evil being. Whether canon will support these depictions of Deceit is TBD (totally believable, dude? No, to be determined). 

Platonic 2/10; I’ve seen some good stuff, but we have little canon material for Deceit; the other sides should be cautious while interacting with him.

Romantic 0/10; I have a personal relationship with dishonesty and manipulation that means I just can’t get behind these ships.

[sunshine-captain]

Hi! I asked Phoenix (horsegirlharry) for fic recs about star trek tos and she sent me to you! I am a new fan and in desperate need for some good fics since I am having a hard time finding them. I would be very grateful if you could link me to some. Thank you in advance

Oh my goodness!!! Hello my friend! I’m honored Phoenix directed you to me, I really am! To tell you the truth, they’re the one that actually convinced me to watch TOS from the start. Welcome to the fandom!! 

To start off with, here is a lovely rec blog that is exclusively TOS (that I’m a mod on, so I am of course biased, but I loved the blog even before I was added, haha!) It’s not updated that often at the moment, usually just when I have some spare time, but there’s a lot of recs already added to look through, and there are plenty of tags to maybe let you look for tropes or genres that you like. :) 

Alright, here go the recs! 

Sha Ka Ree The year is 2258. Jim Kirk is a Lieutenant on the U.S.S. Farragut, Spock the science officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise. When the ships come together for a priority landing party, these two strangers find themselves fighting against the odds for a chance at life in an alien world, and the only way they’ll make it through is by relying on each other. This is a TOS fic that takes place seven years before the show begins. It’s one of my favorite fics ever, it’s beautiful and just perfect. It’s a lovely slow burn, and it contains one of my fave tropes: Jim (Kirk) and Spock crash on an alien world and get stranded there. So, so highly recommended! Honestly, that writer is amazing and anything by them I recommend.

Crash and Burn As the Enterprise’s celebrated voyage winds down, the tension between her captain and first officer escalates, and three days aboard Jupiter’s premier lunar station will change everything. Jim doesn’t handle change very well. Slow-build, character-study prelude to the Lost Years and TMP. Unhappy ending, but canon functions as a fix-it! As the summary states, this fic doesn’t end happily. But it’s basically an explanation as to why Spock does what he does prior to The Motion Picture (I’m not sure if you’ve seen the movies so I won’t clarify just in case you haven’t, haha!), which also means there is a happy ending after the events of the movies. I had it in my bookmarks under the tag I use for fics that hurt me (literally ‘ow’, lol) so apparently I found it pretty painful. ;__;

The Squire of Eros An old nemesis pays a social call to the Enterprise just in time for the annual Valentine’s Day party. On this occasion it’s Spock who draws the brunt force of his irritating personality. But when his holiday-inspired antics turn dangerous, it’s up to the Captain and crew to take him down, and Jim is forced to confront his long-evaded desires regarding his first officer. Written for the K/S Valentine Challenge at LJ, beta’d by purple_spock. This one isn’t even remotely as serious as the other two. It’s honestly just a lot of humor and lightheartedness for the most part. It features Trelane from TOS paying another visit to the crew. :D 

Definitions “We call it t'hy'la,” Spock says. This one is so beautiful. It’s a relatively short oneshot (under 10k) but it’s so romantic and in character and just perfect (this author is another one of my favorites, I would read anything at all by them.)

Pattern Deviations A mind meld is the most intimate of any possible connection – to know and be known, wholly and completely. Usually, melds are advocated for leading to increased understanding and empathy. Spock wonders what it means, then, that everyone he melds with is so repulsed by his mind… Until he meets James Kirk, anyway. This is by the same writer as Definitions; another lovely oneshot by them. I love it! 

And I Am Also Quite Blind In the aftermath of Spock’s blinding in Operation Annihilate, Jim tries to help him through his pain. A fic with premise that Spock doesn’t handily recover from his blindness in Operation Annihilate. Lengthy, painful, excellent. I try to avoid WIPs because I can’t deal with the pain of fics that are NEVER FINISHED, but I started reading this one when it was only halfway through and man, it sucked me in. Worth it! (And it has been completed now, so no worries, haha.)

Undone During first contact with the highly telepathic Nghians, an invasion begins on their home world. A powerful psychic attack cripples the populace–and Spock.Out of contact with the Enterprise and stranded on a planet at war, Jim must struggle to keep himself and his violent, unpredictable first officer alive. Another of my favorite writers! I love this fic. Lengthy, excellent, and that favorite trope of mine again (being stranded, heh), this is great. Please note the tags, though!

What I Am To You I say, “Ask me anything, Spock,” for perhaps the fifth time.This time, you respond, your gaze bright and penetrating, “Perhaps you could satisfy my curiosity in–one particular.”“Of course,” I say enthusiastically.You seem perfectly calm as you ask, “How long have we been lovers?” And I am certain I have heard you correctly, even as I struggle not to allow my astonishment to show on my face. Takes place after the events of the third movie. Spock tries to make sense of his and Jim’s relationship.

Spice It’s a question of biology. Vulcan biology.The problem with falling in love with a member of an insanely private species is that it just might take you the best part of a five year mission to work out that the feelings are requited. And then you might discover that he’s already decided that the two of you can never be together.And what are you supposed to do if he won’t tell you why? Honestly, I’m reccing this one with…some trepidation. I never did decide whether I actually liked the fic or not, but I know a lot of people do like it. It’s most definitely one of the longest fics I’ve ever read in this fandom. It’s the SLOWEST OF ALL SLOW BURNS, which you said you liked, and even though it made me SO ANGRY at one point that I almost threw my phone across the room when one plot twist happened, it’s well written and in character. The reason behind it all is…kind of silly, in all honesty, but it makes complete sense why Spock thinks it would be best if Jim wasn’t with him, just like him to be so overprotective. *sigh* I’d say definitely give it a try and see if you get sucked in!

Translating Ennoia Spock intends to resign his commission with Starfleet six months into the Enterprise’s mission. Then he meets Captain Kirk – his t'hy'la – and everything becomes infinitely more complex. This author again! This fic has lots of pining. I love pining. And I love happy endings and romance and watching Jim and Spock’s friendship develop, too, and this fic has all of that.

Dirty Laundry Jim keeps leaving dirty dishes in the sink and toast crumbs in the bed. Spock deals with the mess silently until an unfortunate ironing incident puts it all in perspective. Jim and Spock have to adjust to domestic life. Spock has to adjust to Jim’s messiness. Domestic Spirk is always wonderful, and I enjoy that in this one it’s not all perfect at first. They have to adjust and learn to actually live together.

Breaking Tradition Newlyweds James T. Kirk and Spock spend their Holiday shore leave alone together in a remote cabin once belonging to Jim’s grandparents. They learn more about each other and Jim introduces his new husband to the Winter Holiday traditions - even if he doesn’t quite understand why he take part in them himself. An unexpected event occurs that disrupts the couple’s newlywed bliss. Luckily, one of them has experience with taking charge of a situation. This one is sooo sweet. Jim just wants to share Christmas with Spock, but they have a mishap. But it’s okay, because Jim takes good care of Spock. (Features cold!Spock, one of my favorite things. :3 )

Ghost in the Machine Tom Paris stumbles upon a Pandora’s Box of loss and regret. This fic is the outlier in this list; it’s actually a crossover of sorts between TOS and VOY. I’ve not actually watched Voyager yet, but that doesn’t stop me from reading and enjoying the fic, so please don’t let that stop you! Let me tell you, though, this has to be one of the most painful fics I’ve ever read. It just makes me cry for Jim and Spock both. It’s so painful. But also really great. But I totally understand if you don’t want to read this one, haha! It’s not for everyone. It messed me up though, I kept thinking about it for days. Especially Jim as he is in this fic. Ugh.

Home Renovation Shortly before his first mission to Romulus, Spock buys a fixer-upper house with Jim. Although Jim is excited to begin renovating their new home, Spock worries it’s only a matter of time before his husband falls off a ladder and breaks his spine. Not to mention, the house’s derelict state is preventing Spock from enjoying his remaining time with Jim. Old Married Spirk, protective!Spock, perfection.

To Be Wed “With a human ruling alongside King Sarek, it makes sense that they would want a Vulcan to rule alongside you. Look on the bright side. At least it’s not Sybok."Prince S'chn T'gai Spock and Crown Prince Sam Kirk are pushed by their families into an awkward courtship, sure to become an awkward marriage. Meanwhile, the younger Terran prince just wants to make sure his future brother-in-law feels comfortable in his new home. But unfortunately for Jim, the road to hopeless, unrequited love is paved with good intentions. It’s an AU, obviously, and it’s by the same author as Sha Ka Ree (who as I mentioned is one of my favorite writers) and I just adore this fic, it’s so great! Pining, slowly getting to watch Jim and Spock falling in love even when it’s ill advised, Sybok!! I’m also just a total sucker for royalty AUs so that helps. 

In My Own Skin After the events of Turnabout Intruder, Jim is trapped in Janice Lester’s body indefinitely and has to learn to carry on with his normal life and duties trapped in this body. Established relationship with Spock, but things become understandably difficult as a result of Jim’s situation. Complicating matters even further, the Enterprise is assigned to a difficult diplomatic mission with a new member of the Federation. I don’t know about everyone else, but my brain definitely went “what if Jim was stuck in that body…” after watching Turnabout Intruder, and this fic definitely satisfied that urge to see that explored. 

Heat Trapped together in a cave until the storm ceases, Jim and Spock find some freedom outside the press of the ship and its responsibilities. Oh look….this writer again. :DDD You’re starting to notice a pattern here, I’m sure. This was written because of a prompt I gave, so obviously I’m a little biased, but it’s just SO perfect??? Cold!Spock, cuddling for warmth (another of my favorites, hello), and just so ROMANTIC that I almost can’t handle it.

Okay, those are all TOS, but now I have just a handful of AOS AUs:

Still, Like Dust Vulcans have been enslaved on Earth for more than fifty years. To Jim Kirk, 14, this is just one more chapter from his history book… until his uncle brings home a Vulcan boy to help on the farm. I know this fic isn’t for everyone, it definitely isn’t, but it really is a great read and I enjoyed reading it a lot. There’s a lot of pain, it’s true, but there’s also a happy ending, if that helps.

Inside The River Starfleet sends Jim a spouse and an oddly vacant honeymoon. Arranged marriage!AU, always fun, and an interesting mystery going on throughout. Great read!

That’s all I’ve got for you for now, this should be a start! Welcome again to the fandom, and I hope you find something in this list that you enjoy. :)

[deadinsidedressage]

What do you think of TMFCK defending dancing horses so much? Like obviously he’s not advocating for it but defending tying up and whipping/beating a horse in the name of tradition and cultural sensitivity fucks me up. Clinton Anderson relies on abusing horses to pay his bills, and everyone thinks that’s fucked up. so why is it suddenly okay for people in other countries to do that?

I’ll straight up admit that I don’t see the majority of his content and also can’t be bothered to go look at it to confirm what I’m about to say and this is going to be based off the what I saw in his arguments the last time him & dancing horses actually popped up on my dash:It’s sort of like watching someone try to explain the fact that if a black hole ever crashed into the Earth, the Earth would be fine but there would be an exit and entry point (like a bullet wound) but not quite Get It™. (The hyperlink/bad analogy is literally a cool thing I learned about that was NOT caused by a black hole crashing into the Earth but which caused me to learn what that might do theoretically and I wanted to share that).

So here’s the thing--- he’s not wrong about having to look at it in a cultural context. If you’re trying to look at it from an academically minded viewpoint and learn what their rationales for training in that manner is then you absolutely need to get rid of any biases and ethnocentric views. You’d need to learn it from the view of the people doing it. If you’re trying to look at why they’re doing it that way versus why they’ve not adopted another way, then you also have to look from a culturally mindful perspective. Especially if you’re trying to effect change and get them to adopt methods that are not abusive. You simply cannot change adverse cultural practices when coming in from the viewpoint that they’re Wrong and you’re Right (even if ethically that might be true). People shutdown when they’re being attacked, especially so if what they’re being attacked over is ingrained in their culture. Instead of being an attack on the practice, it turns into an attack on the culture. There are plenty of cultures that aren’t Bad that have Bad Practices and we can only change them through learning about them and empowering them with education to make ethical decisions. 

A great example of how to effect ethical change in a culture whose traditional practices are abusive practices is the Friends of Marwar/Kathiwari Horse organization and what it’s done to replace harsh, crudely constructed Indian bits with snaffles. They also work overall to educate about horse welfare and proper horse care in India, including being partnered with Flying Anvil Foundation (which focuses on bringing updated farrier techniques to the areas of the world that are still dependent on traditional farming and truly agricultural use of horses). What both organizations have in common is that they are aiming to correct very clear abusive/neglect by approaching it from the standpoint that it exists from a lack of education. They go in, they educate, and people adopt these proper care methods and non-abusive techniques/tools because ultimately these people do care about their horses--- even if they only care about maximizing the usefulness of the horse. That last bit there about the “usefulness of the horse” is also something really key to operating effectively in outreach work aimed at improving the condition of any animal that a culture is subsisting off of. You cannot change cultural views with a snap of your finger, so if you enter into a culture that only views the animal as a tool and not in the same Western concept of a companion--- then you need to implement a strategy that focuses on logos versus pathos. (Quick terminology lessons: Logos, Ethos, & Pathos are rhetoric terms that originated from Aristotle and describe the method by which you’re arguing a thesis ((thesis being used in it’s original context to mean a “point of view” or proposition)). Logos is an appeal to logic. Ethos is an appeal to ethics. Pathos is an appeal to emotion. When operating across cultural lines, you generally do not rely on ethos because what is considered ethical is not standard across cultures. You rely on logos and pathos either solely or interchangeably as necessary.)So, if you’re dealing with people who want to do what’s best for their horse because they also care for the horse as pet--- then you can focus more on pathos and use arguments like “if you use this snaffle instead of this traditional bit, it will be softer and cause your horse less pain which will make him happier and more responsive!”If you’re dealing with people who want to do what’s best for their horse only so long as it maximizes the use of the horse--- then you need to focus more on logos and use arguments like “if you use this snaffle instead of this traditional bit then you won’t cause sores and cuts in the horses mouth, and a if the horse is not in pain then it can work longer and if the horse doesn’t have open wounds then it won’t get infections in those wounds that could kill it or mean it wouldn’t be able to work; so by using this snaffle you can get more use out of your horse.”

However, where I’ve seen TMFCK go “wrong” in his arguments or defenses is that he’s not getting past looking at it from what ethnographers call an “insider’s perspective” and applying an “outsider’s perspective”. By only pointing out the the fact that the training is orally passed down and whatever else about it as a means to explain the why there is the abusive practice is only doing half the work. You need to look at the WHY (insider’s perspective) but also the HOW (outsider’s perspective)--- so let me give you my favorite example from an ethnographer about how to apply looking at it from both perspectives because it’s the most chilling:In Brazil, specifically I think it was the capital, within an extremely impoverished community there was an astronomically high infant mortality rate. Going in and studying why this was happening, an ethnographer discovered this was due to something that she translated roughly as “the breath for life”. When a child was born, the practice within the community was to take the newborn immediately after cutting the umbilical cord and places it in a corner of the room on the floor where they would leave it for something like 3 days. You would not look at the child or feed the child, or cover the child. You’d just leave a newborn crying on the floor for 3 days. Now the cultural explanation for this (WHY/insider’s perspective) was because all children born into the world are reincarnations of souls who’ve already lived. God is apparently very silly and doesn’t keep track of which soul just died very well and you need to wait the 3 days to make sure God didn’t make a mistake. The soul itself needed that much time to alert God that “hey I was just alive!” and needed isolation so that a) God could hear it better and b) to prevent the soul from losing it’s memory of it’s past life (which is what happens to babies so that they don’t have their old memories) so that God could take it back. A baby that lasted the three days was a soul that had “the breath for life” and had spent enough time in Heaven that it was ready to live another human life. So--- from the cultural perspective, they weren’t committing infanticide or doing anything wrong because that’s what was needed to help God out with his bad organizational skills. Now the actual, hard science explanation behind why this was a cultural practice and why people didn’t see anything wrong with it (HOW/outider’s perspective) was that this community was so horrifically impoverished that they could not devote resources to many children at all and couldn’t afford to waste them on infants that wouldn’t survive. The waiting the 3 days before even feeding the child was essentially a form of unintentional eugenics because the infants that would be able to survive it would have strong immune systems and clearly just a strong survival ability. The 3 days thing also mimicked a very real possibility of the children going days without being fed as that was a very real possibility in the community. These children would then be worth devoting precious resources too because it wouldn’t be a waste. Yes, this community was committing infanticide but they were committing infanticide on children that would have likely died anyway and preserving resources that would be valuable in keeping other community members alive. Is it wrong to let a baby die on purpose? Still yes, but at least there was a reasoning behind why that had become a necessary thing.The point is, you need both views of something in order to absolutely fully understand why it is happening. Only with an understanding of it can you remedy it. In the above example you could scream at them to stop leaving babies to die---maybe even get them to stop leaving babies to die, but ultimately those babies still would have died. Knowing that it was a resource problem meant that two viable options to prevent needless baby death would be 1) Give them more resources and/or 2) Introduce them to family planning so we’re only having babies we know we have resources for. Without both aspects of understanding you can’t provide a real solution. 

So, I get what he’s saying and he’s not wrong and he does make good points about racism (or at least he did the last time I saw it and I actually chimed in about it too--- and actually the Clinton Anderson thing is a great example of racial bias: people will accept his abuse because it’s in the context of a white culture but condemn the dancing horse abuse because of it’s context in a middle eastern or south american culture. They’re still both abuse and they’re actually both pretty closely related in terms of abuse but it’s important to understand that abuse is abuse even if a white guy is doing it and if you’re only calling it out when NOT a white guy is doing it then you’re not doing it because you care about horse welfare, you’re doing it because you’re racist) BUT at the same time he’s not going far enough in deciphering and breaking down what he’s sharing.

 He needs to be able to quantify the abuse without qualifying it. 

[maiji]

Niounomiya / Kaoruchujo (The Perfumed Prince / The Fragrant Captain), 2018 Tale of Genji (Uji chapters)

“He [Kaoru] gave off [...] an otherworldly fragrance, and it was a wonder how no matter where he went, the breeze that eddied behind him seemed really to perfume the air to a hundred paces. [...]This most unusually personal fragrance roused His Highness of War [Niou] to special rivalry. He purposely suffused his clothes with the finest incenses[...] In spring he contemplated his garden’s plum blossoms...”

- The Perfumed Prince, Tyler translation

Fountain pen ink and waterbrush - Papier Plume Sepia, Kyo Iro Cherry Blossom of Keage, KWZ Confederation Brown, Kyo no Oto Yamabukiiro. Many thanks to my dad for supplying his calligraphy for me to copy!

Kaoru’s nice smell, which I mentioned previously, may seem odd/random from a Western perspective, but it’s tied to a major theme of his character. A beautiful fragrance is supposed to be sign of an enlightened being, so it’s a carryover of his karma from a past life. Except in this life it drives him crazy because he can’t get rid of it and everybody always knows when he’s in the area.

I wanted to include some brief thoughts about these characters and their relationship, but it accidentally exploded into an essay. See below the cut and I am so sorry to anyone for whom the cut fails.

(The Kaoru - Ukifune - Niou love triangle is such an obvious, common point of discussion in their relationship, so I won’t spend time on that here.)

Of the three generations of friendship-rivalries in Tale of Genji, the third is by far the most diametrically opposed. Niou's a hotshot prince who chases practically any woman because he can, being so notorious that even his servants and guardians are constantly like, where the hell is Niou NOW and for god’s sakes, don’t tell him about whatever or he’s going to get into it!! Kaoru is a wannabe monk who keeps getting derailed in this pursuit, in the beginning because he's taking care of his mom, and later because he’s asked by the aging and dying Prince Hachi (whom he greatly respects and has been studying Buddhist scriptures with) to take care of his daughters. People have summarized Niou as successor of Genji’s dynamism, charm and passion, and Kaoru as successor of Genji’s spiritualist sensitivities. So I guess you can call them Genji without the morals VS Genji without the libido, which is simplified but fairly accurate.

It’s also interesting to compare/contrast their actual heritage. Niou is Genji’s grandson through his daughter the Akashi Empress. He was also Murasaki’s favourite, and he was a cute kid, but she might have been appalled to see how he turned out. Kaoru meanwhile is the result of an affair between Kashiwagi (To no Chujo’s son) and the Third Princess (Genji’s youngest wife), and though everyone involved kept the secret pretty well, he’s always had this unsettled feeling of displacement and a sense that something was weird about his mother’s situation. (I’m a huge sucker for quietly and privately sad scenes, and the brief one where Kaoru, after learning the truth about his birth, with his real father's incriminating letters in hand, rushes home to talk to his mother - and then decides never to let her know that he knows because it would only upset her - was definitely one of those to me.)

From my perspective, Murasaki Shikibu or whoever wrote these chapters did a decent job making the Kaoru-Niou friendship believable and even supportive (mostly thanks to Kaoru) before all the crap hits the ceiling later (mostly thanks to Niou). The Uji chapters are rightfully considered a tragedy, but as I was reading I found the predicaments these two kept getting themselves into, and the sheer contrast of their positions and dispositions, rather hilarious.

At one point in the story, the pair have befriended the sisters Oigimi and Nakanokimi (the daughters Kaoru’s been asked to take care of, mentioned earlier). Because both Kaoru and Niou are of excellent status, getting married to either of them is about as much assurance that a woman would be taken care of as you could get in aristocratic Heian society. Only dad kinda FORGOT TO TELL HIS DAUGHTERS that he asked Kaoru to take care of them before he died, so they think their father wants them to stay hermits in their isolated house forever. GJ DAD YOU HAD ONE JOB

So anyways, both of them are courting the sisters. Well, Niou is definitely courting one (or both, he was kind of confused who he’s talking to/exchanging poetry with, but he is Very Serious about whomever it is). Kaoru’s doing whatever Kaoru does, which mostly seems to be talking a lot to this old woman who serves the sisters because she knew his real father, and chatting with the sisters, and slowly falling in love with the elder sister Oigimi.

But Niou being an imperial prince can’t get out and travel as easily as Kaoru can, plus he’s frequently put under house arrest for his bad behaviour. This leaves Kaoru to visit the sisters regularly and plead the case of his best friend’s sincerity. I kept picturing Kaoru all bundled up and paddling out to the middle of nowhere, and apologetically explaining for the umpteenth time, “I am so sorry. Niou couldn’t make it again. Yes, he’s grounded again. No, he really is grounded. I know you’ve heard that he’s a terrible playboy, and, well, he is, but he really is very in love with you. Uh, with one of you. He’s really very serious about whichever one of you was writing to him. Really” And the sisters behind their screen are like “WTF KIND OF IDIOTS DO YOU THINK WE ARE” (Please don’t take this as an accurate description of the story)

And then you get passages like this scene. Here we have Niou observing Kaoru in private mourning over Oigimi’s death:

"After many days of tears [Kaoru’s] features had changed, although not for the worse, for they now had so fine a beauty and grace that [Niou], who deplored his own waywardness, saw that he would certainly lose his heart to him, if he himself were a woman."

- Trefoil Knots (Tyler translation)

The next few lines, beginning with "That was a worry" makes me interpret it as either Niou going, "Uh oh, better get my brain onto a new train of thought", or "Uh oh, better get my new wife - whom KAORU HELPED ME TO WIN OVER AND IS STILL TRYING TO HELP CONVINCE WHAT A DECENT GUY I AM - to my house quick in case she falls in love with him."

Obviously, I'm biased towards Kaoru. But hey, I’m not alone! Many readers from the Heian period onwards felt the same. The Mumyozoshi or Nameless Book - a 13th century work of prose criticism by an author many believe to be Fujiwara Toshinari no Musume (“Shunzei’s Daughter”), whose family was dedicated to study of Genji Monogatari - argues that Kaoru is perfect and defends him from criticism. I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but I was super amused. And there are quite a few ancient writings that extend or reimagine things to better favour Kaoru - or at least cut Niou down to size. Here’s an example:

And His Majesty the Emperor Niou said, "Wow, you found Ukifune? Really? That’s great! Uh, you’re not still mad at me after all this time, are you? Boy, I was such an asshole back then and caused so much shit for both of us. Blah blah blah grovel grovel sob sob grovel." The Palace Minister Kaoru was so thoughtful even when he was young that he put everybody else to shame, and he barely ever complained. He now knew even more that life was fleeting and everything was impermanent and that really they’d all been at fault and his depth of compassion and understanding was way beyond even what even the most devout monk could achieve. So he wasn’t bitter at all. He replied, "It’s OK, there’s no point being angry about the past. Whatever happened was fated to happen." And he chatted about this and that until they all felt better. After he left His Majesty said, ‘Goddamn he’s amazing. I’m not worthy to be in his presence.” Actually His Majesty was annoyed because the women in his service were always going on and on about how wonderful the Minister was.”

- extremely paraphrased by me from Kumogakure Rokujo (Tale of Genji apocryphal chapters)

I hope you will agree that this amazingness would not be out of place on fanfiction.net.

Conversely, to balance out this biased post, Royall Tyler wrote an essay titled "Pity Poor Kaoru" that argues the whole narrative is set up to make you feel sorry for him to the exclusion of consideration for the other characters, and that even bearing this in mind he's not really the deep nice guy everyone thinks he is. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, but I do agree the reader is intended to sympathize with Kaoru (there’s a reason I haven’t seen any readers rushing to Niou’s defence). In any case, it's an interesting read with some good points. Centuries-spanning annotated fandom debates are so fascinating!

Wrapping up with some thoughts on Niou. As you may already know, I don’t like him, but to be fair that’s kind of the point. For the most part, aside from his amoral philandering ways and his heightened sense of suspicion that everybody’s doing the same thing he is, he seems otherwise a decent...ish... person. I guess lol. He's authentically very passionate about whatever his stupid inclinations are at the time, he really was housebound against his will at those critical parts in the story (although it’s partly his own fault…), and there are multiple points where he appears to feel genuine remorse at his own asshattery. 

Regardless of whether I’d like him as a real person or not, he’s a character. I recognize the Niou/Kaoru dynamic and relationship is central to the Uji chapters, his role makes the story what it is, and this is what creates conflict, interest, and entertainment. After all, while *I* would read 1200 pages about Kaoru being a monk, not everybody would. And even as I’m writing that, I admit it’s not the most exciting-sounding material.... and 1200 pages is a lot of pages... Ultimately Kaoru and Niou are great reminders that stories are only more compelling when you have interesting relationships and interactions. And I can say with greater confidence that I would read 1200 pages of Kaoru trying to be a monk and dealing with Niou being a turd. Thank you for reading my long wall of text.

[michaelandy101-blog]

YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020

New Post has been published on https://tiptopreview.com/youtube-dominates-google-video-in-2020/

YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020

In a study of 2.1M searches and 766K videos, YouTube accounted for 94% of all video carousel results on page one of Google, leaving little room for competition.

Even the most casual video aficionado knows YouTube (acquired by Google in 2006). As a Google search user, you may even feel like you encounter more YouTube videos than videos from other sources, but does the data back this up? 

A Wall Street Journal article in June 2020 measured a strong advantage of YouTube in Google search results, but that article focused on 98 hand-selected videos to compare YouTube to other platforms. 

Using a set of over two million Google.com (US) desktop searches captured in early October 2020, we were able to extract more than 250,000 results with video carousels on page one. Most organic video results in 2020 appear in a carousel, like this one:

This carousel appeared on a search for “How to be an investor” (Step 1: Find a bag of money). Notice the arrow on the far-right — currently, searchers can scroll through up to ten videos. While our research tracked all ten positions, most of this report will focus on the three visible positions.

How dominant is YouTube?

Anecdotally, we see YouTube pop up a lot in Google results, but how dominant are they in the visible three video carousel results across our data set? Here’s a breakdown:

YouTube’s presence across the first three video slots was remarkably consistent, at (1) 94.1%, (2) 94.2% and (3) 94.2%. Khan Academy and Facebook took the #2 and #3 rankings for each carousel slot, with Facebook gaining share in later slots.

Obviously, this is a massive drop from the first to second largest share, and YouTube’s presence only varied from 94.1% to 95.1% across all ten slots. Across all visible videos in the carousel, here are the top ten sites in our data set:

YouTube (94.2%)

Khan Academy (1.5%)

Facebook (1.4%)

Microsoft (0.4%)

Vimeo (0.1%)

Twitter (0.1%)

Dailymotion (<0.1%)

CNBC (<0.1%)

CNN (<0.1%)

ESPN (<0.1%)

Note that, due to technical limitations with how search spiders work, many Facebook and Twitter videos require a login and are unavailable to Google. That said, the #2 to #10 biggest players in the video carousel — including some massive brands with deep pockets for video content — add up to only 3.7% of visible videos.

How about how-to?

Pardon my grammar, but “How to…?” questions have become a hot spot for video results, and naturally lend themselves to niche players like HGTV. Here’s a video carousel from a search for “how to organize a pantry”:

It looks promising on the surface, but does this niche show more diversity of websites at scale? Our data set included just over 45,000 “How to …” searches with video carousels. Here’s the breakdown of the top three sites for each slot:

In our data set, YouTube is even more dominant in the how-to niche, taking up from 97-98% of each of the three visible slots. Khan Academy came in second, and Microsoft (specifically, the Microsoft support site) rounded out the third position (but at <1% in all three slots).

Is this just a fluke?

Most of this analysis was based on a snapshot of data in early October. Given that Google frequently makes changes and runs thousands of tests per year, could we have just picked a particularly unusual day? To answer that, we pulled YouTube’s prevalence across all videos in the carousel on the first day of each month of 2020:

YouTube’s dominance was fairly steady across 2020, ranging from 92.0% to 95.3% in our data set (and actually increasing a bit since January). Clearly, this is not a temporary nor particularly recent condition.

Another challenge in studying Google results, even with large data sets, is the possibility of sampling bias. There is no truly “random” sample of search results (more on that in Appendix A), but we’re lucky enough to have a second data set with a long history. While this data set is only 10,000 keywords, it was specifically designed to evenly represent the industry categories in Google Ads. On October 9, we were able to capture 2,390 video carousels from this data set. Here’s how they measured up:

The top three sites in each of the carousel slots were identical to the 2M-keyword data set, and YouTube’s dominance was even higher (up from 94% to 96%). We have every confidence that the prevalence of YouTube results measured in this study is not a fluke of a single day or a single data set.

How level is the field?

Does YouTube have an unfair advantage? “Fair” is a difficult concept to quantify, so let’s explore Google’s perspective. 

Google’s first argument would probably be that YouTube has the lion’s share of video results because they host the lion’s share of videos. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get reliable numbers across the entire world of video hosting, and especially for social platforms. YouTube is undoubtedly a massive player and likely hosts the majority of non-social, public videos in the United States, but 94% seems like a big share even for the lion. 

The larger problem is that this dominance becomes self-perpetuating. Over the past few years, more major companies have hosted videos on YouTube and created YouTube channels because it’s easier to get results in Google search than hosting on smaller platforms or their own site.

Google’s more technical argument is that the video search algorithm has no inherent preference for YouTube. As a search marketer, I’ve learned to view this argument narrowly. There’s probably not a line of code in the algorithm that says something like:

IF site = ‘YouTube’ THEN ranking = 1

Defined narrowly, I believe that Google is telling the truth. However, there’s no escaping the fact that Google and YouTube share a common backbone and many of the same internal organs, which provides advantages that may be insurmountable.

For example, Google’s video algorithm might reward speed. This makes sense — a slow-loading video is a bad customer experience and makes Google look bad. Naturally, Google’s direct ownership over YouTube means that their access to YouTube data is lightning fast. Realistically, how can a competitor, even with billions in investment, produce an experience that’s faster than a direct pipeline to Google? Likewise, YouTube’s data structure is naturally going to be optimized for Google to easily process and digest, relying on inside knowledge that might not be equally available to all players.

For now, from a marketing perspective, we’re left with little choice but to cover our bases and take the advantage YouTube seems to offer. There’s no reason we should expect YouTube’s numbers to decrease, and every reason to expect YouTube’s dominance to grow, at least without a paradigm-shifting disruption to the industry.

Many thanks to Eric H. and Michael G. on our Vancouver team for sharing their knowledge about the data set and how to interpret it, and to Eric and Rob L. for trusting me with Athena access to a treasure trove of data.

Appendix A: Data and methodology

The bulk of the data for this study was collected in early October 2020 from a set of just over two million Google.com, US-based, desktop search results. After minor de-duplication and clean-up, this data set yielded 258K searches with video carousels on page one. These carousels accounted for 2.1 million total video results/URLs and 767K visible results (Google displays up to three per carousel, without scrolling).

The how-to analysis was based on a smaller data set of 45K keywords that explicitly began with the words “how to”. Neither data set is a randomly selected sample and may be biased toward certain industries or verticals.

The follow-up 10K data set was constructed specifically as a research data set and is evenly distributed across 20 major industry categories in Google Ads. This data set was specifically designed to represent a wide range of competitive terms.

Why don’t we use true random sampling? Outside of the textbook, a truly random sample is rarely achieved, but theoretically possible. Selecting a random sample of adults in The United States, for example, is incredibly difficult (as soon as you pick up the phone or send out an email, you’ve introduced bias), but at least we know that, at any particular moment, the population of adults in the United States is a finite set of individual people.

The same isn’t true of Google searches. Searches are not a finite set, but a cloud of words being conjured out of the void by searchers every millisecond. According to Google themselves: “There are trillions of searches on Google every year. In fact, 15 percent of searches we see every day are new.” The population of searches is not only in the trillions, but changing every minute.

Ultimately, we rely on large data sets, where possible, try to understand the flaws in any given data set, and replicate our work across multiple data sets. This study was replicated against two very different data sets, as well as a third set created by a thematic slice of the first set, and validated against multiple dates in 2020.

Source link

[localwebmgmt]

YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020

Posted by Dr-Pete

In a study of 2.1M searches and 766K videos, YouTube accounted for 94% of all video carousel results on page one of Google, leaving little room for competition.

Even the most casual video aficionado knows YouTube (acquired by Google in 2006). As a Google search user, you may even feel like you encounter more YouTube videos than videos from other sources, but does the data back this up? 

A Wall Street Journal article in June 2020 measured a strong advantage of YouTube in Google search results, but that article focused on 98 hand-selected videos to compare YouTube to other platforms. 

Using a set of over two million Google.com (US) desktop searches captured in early October 2020, we were able to extract more than 250,000 results with video carousels on page one. Most organic video results in 2020 appear in a carousel, like this one:

This carousel appeared on a search for “How to be an investor” (Step 1: Find a bag of money). Notice the arrow on the far-right — currently, searchers can scroll through up to ten videos. While our research tracked all ten positions, most of this report will focus on the three visible positions.

How dominant is YouTube?

Anecdotally, we see YouTube pop up a lot in Google results, but how dominant are they in the visible three video carousel results across our data set? Here’s a breakdown:

YouTube’s presence across the first three video slots was remarkably consistent, at (1) 94.1%, (2) 94.2% and (3) 94.2%. Khan Academy and Facebook took the #2 and #3 rankings for each carousel slot, with Facebook gaining share in later slots.

Obviously, this is a massive drop from the first to second largest share, and YouTube’s presence only varied from 94.1% to 95.1% across all ten slots. Across all visible videos in the carousel, here are the top ten sites in our data set:

YouTube (94.2%)

Khan Academy (1.5%)

Facebook (1.4%)

Microsoft (0.4%)

Vimeo (0.1%)

Twitter (0.1%)

Dailymotion (<0.1%)

CNBC (<0.1%)

CNN (<0.1%)

ESPN (<0.1%)

Note that, due to technical limitations with how search spiders work, many Facebook and Twitter videos require a login and are unavailable to Google. That said, the #2 to #10 biggest players in the video carousel — including some massive brands with deep pockets for video content — add up to only 3.7% of visible videos.

How about how-to?

Pardon my grammar, but “How to…?” questions have become a hot spot for video results, and naturally lend themselves to niche players like HGTV. Here’s a video carousel from a search for “how to organize a pantry”:

It looks promising on the surface, but does this niche show more diversity of websites at scale? Our data set included just over 45,000 “How to …” searches with video carousels. Here’s the breakdown of the top three sites for each slot:

In our data set, YouTube is even more dominant in the how-to niche, taking up from 97-98% of each of the three visible slots. Khan Academy came in second, and Microsoft (specifically, the Microsoft support site) rounded out the third position (but at <1% in all three slots).

Is this just a fluke?

Most of this analysis was based on a snapshot of data in early October. Given that Google frequently makes changes and runs thousands of tests per year, could we have just picked a particularly unusual day? To answer that, we pulled YouTube’s prevalence across all videos in the carousel on the first day of each month of 2020:

YouTube’s dominance was fairly steady across 2020, ranging from 92.0% to 95.3% in our data set (and actually increasing a bit since January). Clearly, this is not a temporary nor particularly recent condition.

Another challenge in studying Google results, even with large data sets, is the possibility of sampling bias. There is no truly “random” sample of search results (more on that in Appendix A), but we’re lucky enough to have a second data set with a long history. While this data set is only 10,000 keywords, it was specifically designed to evenly represent the industry categories in Google Ads. On October 9, we were able to capture 2,390 video carousels from this data set. Here’s how they measured up:

The top three sites in each of the carousel slots were identical to the 2M-keyword data set, and YouTube’s dominance was even higher (up from 94% to 96%). We have every confidence that the prevalence of YouTube results measured in this study is not a fluke of a single day or a single data set.

How level is the field?

Does YouTube have an unfair advantage? “Fair” is a difficult concept to quantify, so let’s explore Google’s perspective. 

Google’s first argument would probably be that YouTube has the lion’s share of video results because they host the lion’s share of videos. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get reliable numbers across the entire world of video hosting, and especially for social platforms. YouTube is undoubtedly a massive player and likely hosts the majority of non-social, public videos in the United States, but 94% seems like a big share even for the lion. 

The larger problem is that this dominance becomes self-perpetuating. Over the past few years, more major companies have hosted videos on YouTube and created YouTube channels because it’s easier to get results in Google search than hosting on smaller platforms or their own site.

Google’s more technical argument is that the video search algorithm has no inherent preference for YouTube. As a search marketer, I’ve learned to view this argument narrowly. There’s probably not a line of code in the algorithm that says something like:

IF site = ‘YouTube’ THEN ranking = 1

Defined narrowly, I believe that Google is telling the truth. However, there’s no escaping the fact that Google and YouTube share a common backbone and many of the same internal organs, which provides advantages that may be insurmountable.

For example, Google’s video algorithm might reward speed. This makes sense — a slow-loading video is a bad customer experience and makes Google look bad. Naturally, Google’s direct ownership over YouTube means that their access to YouTube data is lightning fast. Realistically, how can a competitor, even with billions in investment, produce an experience that’s faster than a direct pipeline to Google? Likewise, YouTube’s data structure is naturally going to be optimized for Google to easily process and digest, relying on inside knowledge that might not be equally available to all players.

For now, from a marketing perspective, we’re left with little choice but to cover our bases and take the advantage YouTube seems to offer. There’s no reason we should expect YouTube’s numbers to decrease, and every reason to expect YouTube’s dominance to grow, at least without a paradigm-shifting disruption to the industry.

Many thanks to Eric H. and Michael G. on our Vancouver team for sharing their knowledge about the data set and how to interpret it, and to Eric and Rob L. for trusting me with Athena access to a treasure trove of data.

Appendix A: Data and methodology

The bulk of the data for this study was collected in early October 2020 from a set of just over two million Google.com, US-based, desktop search results. After minor de-duplication and clean-up, this data set yielded 258K searches with video carousels on page one. These carousels accounted for 2.1 million total video results/URLs and 767K visible results (Google displays up to three per carousel, without scrolling).

The how-to analysis was based on a smaller data set of 45K keywords that explicitly began with the words “how to”. Neither data set is a randomly selected sample and may be biased toward certain industries or verticals.

The follow-up 10K data set was constructed specifically as a research data set and is evenly distributed across 20 major industry categories in Google Ads. This data set was specifically designed to represent a wide range of competitive terms.

Why don’t we use true random sampling? Outside of the textbook, a truly random sample is rarely achieved, but theoretically possible. Selecting a random sample of adults in The United States, for example, is incredibly difficult (as soon as you pick up the phone or send out an email, you’ve introduced bias), but at least we know that, at any particular moment, the population of adults in the United States is a finite set of individual people.

The same isn’t true of Google searches. Searches are not a finite set, but a cloud of words being conjured out of the void by searchers every millisecond. According to Google themselves: “There are trillions of searches on Google every year. In fact, 15 percent of searches we see every day are new.” The population of searches is not only in the trillions, but changing every minute.

Ultimately, we rely on large data sets, where possible, try to understand the flaws in any given data set, and replicate our work across multiple data sets. This study was replicated against two very different data sets, as well as a third set created by a thematic slice of the first set, and validated against multiple dates in 2020.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[kjt-lawyers]

YouTube Dominates Google Video in 2020

Posted by Dr-Pete

In a study of 2.1M searches and 766K videos, YouTube accounted for 94% of all video carousel results on page one of Google, leaving little room for competition.

Even the most casual video aficionado knows YouTube (acquired by Google in 2006). As a Google search user, you may even feel like you encounter more YouTube videos than videos from other sources, but does the data back this up? 

A Wall Street Journal article in June 2020 measured a strong advantage of YouTube in Google search results, but that article focused on 98 hand-selected videos to compare YouTube to other platforms. 

Using a set of over two million Google.com (US) desktop searches captured in early October 2020, we were able to extract more than 250,000 results with video carousels on page one. Most organic video results in 2020 appear in a carousel, like this one:

This carousel appeared on a search for “How to be an investor” (Step 1: Find a bag of money). Notice the arrow on the far-right — currently, searchers can scroll through up to ten videos. While our research tracked all ten positions, most of this report will focus on the three visible positions.

How dominant is YouTube?

Anecdotally, we see YouTube pop up a lot in Google results, but how dominant are they in the visible three video carousel results across our data set? Here’s a breakdown:

YouTube’s presence across the first three video slots was remarkably consistent, at (1) 94.1%, (2) 94.2% and (3) 94.2%. Khan Academy and Facebook took the #2 and #3 rankings for each carousel slot, with Facebook gaining share in later slots.

Obviously, this is a massive drop from the first to second largest share, and YouTube’s presence only varied from 94.1% to 95.1% across all ten slots. Across all visible videos in the carousel, here are the top ten sites in our data set:

YouTube (94.2%)

Khan Academy (1.5%)

Facebook (1.4%)

Microsoft (0.4%)

Vimeo (0.1%)

Twitter (0.1%)

Dailymotion (<0.1%)

CNBC (<0.1%)

CNN (<0.1%)

ESPN (<0.1%)

Note that, due to technical limitations with how search spiders work, many Facebook and Twitter videos require a login and are unavailable to Google. That said, the #2 to #10 biggest players in the video carousel — including some massive brands with deep pockets for video content — add up to only 3.7% of visible videos.

How about how-to?

Pardon my grammar, but “How to…?” questions have become a hot spot for video results, and naturally lend themselves to niche players like HGTV. Here’s a video carousel from a search for “how to organize a pantry”:

It looks promising on the surface, but does this niche show more diversity of websites at scale? Our data set included just over 45,000 “How to …” searches with video carousels. Here’s the breakdown of the top three sites for each slot:

In our data set, YouTube is even more dominant in the how-to niche, taking up from 97-98% of each of the three visible slots. Khan Academy came in second, and Microsoft (specifically, the Microsoft support site) rounded out the third position (but at <1% in all three slots).

Is this just a fluke?

Most of this analysis was based on a snapshot of data in early October. Given that Google frequently makes changes and runs thousands of tests per year, could we have just picked a particularly unusual day? To answer that, we pulled YouTube’s prevalence across all videos in the carousel on the first day of each month of 2020:

YouTube’s dominance was fairly steady across 2020, ranging from 92.0% to 95.3% in our data set (and actually increasing a bit since January). Clearly, this is not a temporary nor particularly recent condition.

Another challenge in studying Google results, even with large data sets, is the possibility of sampling bias. There is no truly “random” sample of search results (more on that in Appendix A), but we’re lucky enough to have a second data set with a long history. While this data set is only 10,000 keywords, it was specifically designed to evenly represent the industry categories in Google Ads. On October 9, we were able to capture 2,390 video carousels from this data set. Here’s how they measured up:

The top three sites in each of the carousel slots were identical to the 2M-keyword data set, and YouTube’s dominance was even higher (up from 94% to 96%). We have every confidence that the prevalence of YouTube results measured in this study is not a fluke of a single day or a single data set.

How level is the field?

Does YouTube have an unfair advantage? “Fair” is a difficult concept to quantify, so let’s explore Google’s perspective. 

Google’s first argument would probably be that YouTube has the lion’s share of video results because they host the lion’s share of videos. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get reliable numbers across the entire world of video hosting, and especially for social platforms. YouTube is undoubtedly a massive player and likely hosts the majority of non-social, public videos in the United States, but 94% seems like a big share even for the lion. 

The larger problem is that this dominance becomes self-perpetuating. Over the past few years, more major companies have hosted videos on YouTube and created YouTube channels because it’s easier to get results in Google search than hosting on smaller platforms or their own site.

Google’s more technical argument is that the video search algorithm has no inherent preference for YouTube. As a search marketer, I’ve learned to view this argument narrowly. There’s probably not a line of code in the algorithm that says something like:

IF site = ‘YouTube’ THEN ranking = 1

Defined narrowly, I believe that Google is telling the truth. However, there’s no escaping the fact that Google and YouTube share a common backbone and many of the same internal organs, which provides advantages that may be insurmountable.

For example, Google’s video algorithm might reward speed. This makes sense — a slow-loading video is a bad customer experience and makes Google look bad. Naturally, Google’s direct ownership over YouTube means that their access to YouTube data is lightning fast. Realistically, how can a competitor, even with billions in investment, produce an experience that’s faster than a direct pipeline to Google? Likewise, YouTube’s data structure is naturally going to be optimized for Google to easily process and digest, relying on inside knowledge that might not be equally available to all players.

For now, from a marketing perspective, we’re left with little choice but to cover our bases and take the advantage YouTube seems to offer. There’s no reason we should expect YouTube’s numbers to decrease, and every reason to expect YouTube’s dominance to grow, at least without a paradigm-shifting disruption to the industry.

Many thanks to Eric H. and Michael G. on our Vancouver team for sharing their knowledge about the data set and how to interpret it, and to Eric and Rob L. for trusting me with Athena access to a treasure trove of data.

Appendix A: Data and methodology

The bulk of the data for this study was collected in early October 2020 from a set of just over two million Google.com, US-based, desktop search results. After minor de-duplication and clean-up, this data set yielded 258K searches with video carousels on page one. These carousels accounted for 2.1 million total video results/URLs and 767K visible results (Google displays up to three per carousel, without scrolling).

The how-to analysis was based on a smaller data set of 45K keywords that explicitly began with the words “how to”. Neither data set is a randomly selected sample and may be biased toward certain industries or verticals.

The follow-up 10K data set was constructed specifically as a research data set and is evenly distributed across 20 major industry categories in Google Ads. This data set was specifically designed to represent a wide range of competitive terms.

Why don’t we use true random sampling? Outside of the textbook, a truly random sample is rarely achieved, but theoretically possible. Selecting a random sample of adults in The United States, for example, is incredibly difficult (as soon as you pick up the phone or send out an email, you’ve introduced bias), but at least we know that, at any particular moment, the population of adults in the United States is a finite set of individual people.

The same isn’t true of Google searches. Searches are not a finite set, but a cloud of words being conjured out of the void by searchers every millisecond. According to Google themselves: “There are trillions of searches on Google every year. In fact, 15 percent of searches we see every day are new.” The population of searches is not only in the trillions, but changing every minute.

Ultimately, we rely on large data sets, where possible, try to understand the flaws in any given data set, and replicate our work across multiple data sets. This study was replicated against two very different data sets, as well as a third set created by a thematic slice of the first set, and validated against multiple dates in 2020.

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