#btw totally arbitrary example

[this-is-krikkit]

i know this has probably been talked about at length, but i would like to once more thirst after respectfully admire Hange Zoë's physical strength in this scene.

they were able to hold a grown ass man's full weight steadily, 50 meters above ground level, at literal arm's length for about 20 seconds (with his full weight on, the full scene with him holding onto their wrists is much longer), while deciding whether they should kill him thinking over their options and looking more focused on the moral dilemma than on the actual effort they're casually displaying here.

anyway. i just think they're neat.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

That last ask about Animaestro, about LB's cat phobia made me remember that this chapter, chronologically, is before Chat Blanc... So, now I can't help but wonder if that was supposed to be some type of foreshadowing and/or the creator giving us a bit of a low-key spoiler.

It would have been a nice touch, if Maribug really got some screen PTSD (that someone from the PR Team said on their twitter that she indeed has it?). Yes, I know there is that chapter where she has this nightmare about Alya betraying her, but there is nothing else.

Awesome blog, btw, I love your pov regarding this show. I don't really feel that you are aggressively salty, just dissappointed about the wasted potential (like some of us). Even your "salt" towards the writers is pretty tame, but still pretty sure That Guy would block you lol.

(Post in question)

That's an interesting theory. I wouldn't put money on it being intentional, but it is totally possible! Chat Blanc was probably in the writers' minds for a while.

And did someone really claim that she officially has PTSD? Oh boy... I don't want to imply that mental health conditions only present in one way because they absolutely don't! There are a wide variety of ways that they can present themselves! There's also not a tried and true way for someone with PTSD to be triggered. Triggers can be really weird and seemingly make no sense. Things that seemingly should be triggers can somehow not effect you in the slightest and things that seem benign can be massively triggering. Brains are weird like that.

However, this is a story, so I can evaluate Marinette as a tool used to rep someone suffering from PTSD and not as a real person with PTSD who has no obligation to meet any sort of arbitrary standard. In that context, I feel comfortable saying that Marinette was not good rep. You don't get over PTSD by talking to your boyfriend and it's usually not a minor condition that lies dormant most of the time, letting you go about your life without any need for professional help.

One of my biggest pet peeves is stories giving characters a disability that never actually effects their life in a meaningful way. (Yes, PTSD is considered a disability or at least it can be one depending on how it presents.) They're called disabilities for a reason! They can and do have massive impacts on peoples' lives. If you want to include rep, then do it right! Don't give Marinette this condition and then only let it effect her when it's convenient for the story! Figure out her triggers and then let them effect her throughout the narrative because that's how PTSD works! If you don't want to do that, then don't say that she has PTSD.

You can be traumatized without getting PTSD. That is a thing. PTSD is not a synonym for trauma. It's a specific type of trauma response. It's also a real medical condition that requires professional help and a lot of hard work to manage because PTSD never really goes away. You just hopefully learn how to live with it and, in the process, get your symptoms to a manageable state.

Here are some examples of moments when Marinette's PTSD could have triggered, keeping in mind that this is a fictional character and not a real person, meaning that we're looking at this from a "set up the reveal" perspective and not a "people with PTSD have to react to this kind of trigger" perspective.

These moments from Dark Cupid and Derision are a perfect opportunity to show Marinette randomly panicking and to then bring it back during the reveal:

[Image description: two pictures of Kim down on one knee holding out a gift. The first image is from Dark Cupid and the second is from Derision.]

Marinette falling into the same pool in Derision and Mr. Pigeon 72 is another good one:

[Image description: two pictures of Marinette falling off of the same diving board. The first image is from Mr. Pigeon 72 and the second is from Derision.]

These were prime moments to show off her PTSD in a way that fit the story, but they didn't. Yet her condition is so bad that she panics over a bowl of cereal at the start of Derision, implying that her PTSD is pretty darn extreme! If it's that bad, then we should see at least a few hints of it before Derision or even after Derision, but we don't unless we're counting the many, many, many jokes told at Marinette's expense. Hopefully no one is arguing that those should count because using a trauma response for jokes is not quality rep. It also feels like a total cop out because the panic attacks in Derision are played in a wildly different manner from all the times Marinette freaked out in a silly, over-the-top way. It's not intuitive to connect those moments and it should be if those were supposed to be a true setup for the PTSD reveal. They weren't even treated as foreshadowing where Marinette's actions made no sense! Just what are we even doing here, writers?

If the writers are claiming that her PTSD comes from Chat Blanc and not Derision, then we have many examples of Chat Noir getting a white makeover without bothering Marinette, once again begging the question of where her PTSD is? What are her triggers? How is she learning to handle it?

I'll end this section by noting that I do know people who are officially diagnosed with PTSD and I even discussed Marinette with one of them, which is why I feel so comfortable saying that this is bad rep, though obviously you should defer to real experts on this one. If they say that this is great rep and that Marinette is presenting in a way that I'm not familiar with, then ignore me! My sample size is very limited.

I'll finish this off with a quick thank you for the lovely complement:

I don't really feel that you are aggressively salty

My goal is to come across as giving a critical assessment of canon and not just angry ranting, so this was very nice to hear! I want this blog to make you think, I'm really not looking to be angry or to make other people angry. I can't say that I'd blame That Guy for blocking me, though! I've never found creators doing that to be some kind of bad sign. Who wants to read brutal, unsolicited take-downs of their work? That's a special kind of doom scrolling. I'm a big fan of the "reviews are for readers" stance.

[purringbookworm97]

Hii! I'm like rlly new here and I saw ur blog and stuff I'm very confused about the "crystal vibe" thing? Why is amethyst feminine and why is obsidian masculine or why aquamarine is both

Is it because of the properties? Obsidian came from lava and fire so it's masc and yk that and that I almost got my head around it,but then I got confused again

I hope this was okay to ask! I totally understand if you don't wanna asnwer or don't wanna explain,I like ur blog alot btw and tysm for the pinned links

I hope you have a great day 💖 or night

Hi nonnie!

First thing I'm going to ask is, did you see anything about gendered crystals on my blog? Because I don't remember reblogging or writing anything about gendering crystals, since I myself don't particularly appreciate it.

Now of course it's okay to ask and I'm glad you did! Now why do people gender crystals or random objects for that matter? in my limited experiences, it comes from two things, property and aspect.

As you may know, some people associate qualities and flaws with specific genders. If you, like me, have lived in a westernized society, you might have noticed the emphasis that these societies put on the binarity of the sexes and genders. Most of the time, there must be the Masculine and the Feminine, which are pretty much forbidden to come in contact out of procreation.

Yes, you can find depictions of gender neutrality in New Age Spirituality, but when considering gendering objects, one usually decides to separate them into definite Male/Female categories, following guidelines that can be arbitrary about what is which. Let me give you an example:

Usually considered "feminine": healing, family, children, passivity, motherhood, love, affection, softness

Usually considered "masculine": aggressivity, violence, strength, sharpness, assertiveness, dominance

On another plane, fire, stone, and thunder, but also all "violent" phenomena are usually considered masculine, and on the other hand, everything soft such as plants (especially flowers), rain, and round shapes are considered feminine.

Therefore why do people say amethyst is feminine? Because its aspect and properties fall in the usually "feminine" category of things Obsidian would on the other hand have qualities deemed more "masculine", and Aquamarine would have qualities from both.

Now why do I say usually? because none of these qualities is inherent to one gender or the other, there are also more than two genders, and that is my main issue with gendering objects. I'm a transgender guy, and my femininity doesn't make me less of a man, the same way that a very butch lesbian is still a lady because what matters is the ways she identifies.

Of course, if you feel that associating genders to crystals or anything else matters to you, by all means, do it, but do remember that gender is a fluid concept that must resonate with you before it resonates with anybody else. Alternately, it doesn't matter what a crystal looks like or what it does, that doesn't define their gender.

The best way to know what something's gender is: asking. If you know any divination methods (pendulum, runes, tarot but also many more), ask your crystals, and then you'll know!

Hoping I wasn't aggressive in my answer, and that you're having a lovely day, night or evening!

Thank you for sending an ask!

[bigskydreaming]

Its always interesting to me when I see people saying Damian is just like Bruce, in a totally matter of fact way, like its just such a foregone conclusion to them, because I don’t really see it at all, lol. 

Like to be clear, its not that Damian doesn’t have ANY similarities to Bruce, I think all of Bruce’s kids share various attributes with him....I just think most of the ones Damian shares tend to be more superficial than characteristic, and there are others who are far more like Bruce than he is? Personally, I think Cass and Tim have the most in common with Bruce, albeit in different ways.....but tbh I think even Jason has more in common with Bruce than Damian does, for example.

Idk.....like for instance, I consider one of the key differences between Dick and Bruce being that Bruce’s sense of morality and ethics is clearly defined, exists as specific, hard-clung to views that he applies regardless of whom is involved in whatever situation he’s applying them to. To Bruce, ethics and morality exist outside of people, and are inviolate.....they’re not meant to change depending on who they’re aimed at or will be affected by them. In contrast, Dick is someone I see as having a morality largely defined by people. His sense of morals and ethics are more fluid....its not that he doesn’t have clearly defined views of right and wrong that underly his regular actions and choices as sort of a default benchmark, a starting point to work off of....its that Dick sees morals and ethics as meaningless if they don’t serve those he cares about or fights for, or if he has to sacrifice someone he values in service to what he views as an arbitrary moral or ethic that CAN be adjusted if he so chooses to adjust it....like that’s the thing HE’S not willing to do. Its like.....Dick sees individual lives as having more value than the abstract, which is what he ultimately considers a singular principle, and so he’d rather sacrifice the principle than the life. Bruce in contrast doesn’t view morals and ethics as being remotely abstract, and views them as the very things that GIVE individual lives value, so he’s not willing to sacrifice his values or principles full stop.

Or to put it another way: If it comes down to a choice between a killer and their intended victim, where it looks like the only possible way to save their victim is to kill the killer before they can kill instead....Dick will take the shot so to speak.....but since he does still believe killing is wrong and an absolute last resort and he’s been raised by someone who he very much does value and who believes that there’s always another way.....then Dick will self-flagellate for not having been able to find another way that didn’t involve killing the killer. Bruce on the other hand, will attempt down to the very last second to find a way to save both lives, no matter how impossible it seems.....and if he’s ultimately unable to, he’ll then self-flagellate for not having found a way to save both. 

The truly ironic thing IMO, is even in a situation where BOTH consider themselves to have failed, they’ll both still consider their failure to be the exact same thing....though for entirely different reasons and with different results. Both will view ‘not having been able to find another way’ to have been the true failure.....even though, one killed and one didn’t. Because Dick wouldn’t perceive having killed as his true failure.....because that’s the part he doesn’t actually regret, if it means that he saved the killer’s intended victim as a result. He still did it with intent, in this complete hypothetical, because he perceived the victim’s life as more important than his personal desire not to kill or view that killing is wrong. BUT he’ll still consider himself to have failed because despite having saved one life, he’d view the fact that he couldn’t find another way where taking one life wasn’t a NECESSITY in order to accomplish that.....that was his failure, in his mind. Similarly, but completely differently at the same time....Bruce will consider his failure to have been not having found a way to save both. BUT just like Dick’s true regret isn’t that he killed the killer, Bruce’s true regret isn’t that he DIDN’T, in order to save their victim. Its that he couldn’t find a way out of that box that made it a choice of one or the other.

Course, that’s just my perception of the two of them.

But as examples, this is I think WHY Dick was able to kill the Joker at all in Last Laugh, whereas Bruce will ultimately never bring himself to cross that line. (And while Dick wasn’t matter of fact about it by any means, its significant in my mind that his actual stated regrets about that were always that he played into what the Joker had wanted and thus let him win, and that he’d failed Bruce and let him down....never once was it actually that he’d killed the Joker, period.) Similarly, its why Dick’s a lot more willing to work with people he’s ideologically opposed to or more flexible....in fact, I maintain its specifically why Bruce was so convinced that only Dick could infiltrate Spyral. It wasn’t JUST about the logistics of Dick being believed dead after Forever Evil, or Bruce’s issues about having just watched Dick die.......because Bruce is great at undercover work himself, as Matches Malone, and he traditionally HATES delegating the ‘hard stuff’ to someone else, especially when the stakes are this high....even if he does trust that person absolutely. He believes that if its his responsibility, its up to him to do it if at all possible.

Which is why I think that ultimately, the only reason Bruce didn’t find a way to take on the Spyral mission himself, is because he didn’t think he’d be able to. Spyral was a shady spy organization that engaged in morally compromising work on a day to day basis. Deep down, I think Bruce was aware that there would be too many occasions in which he’d be likely to be sidetracked or frozen by his conviction that there HAD to be a way around whatever he was being asked to do for the sake of keeping his cover, that didn’t require acting against various hard-set morals....which more than likely would have cost him the mission and rendered it a failure.....with catastrophic results for his family and the rest of the hero community. Whereas he knew that Dick would be able to find a way to make it work, because despite having a very strong sense of right and wrong of his own, he knows Dick’s highest moral prerogative is that he WILL act on even something he does firmly believe is wrong, if he’s convinced its the price he needs to pay for the sake of loved ones. And thus, even though he wouldn’t be any happier about the moral compromising nature of a lot of Spyral’s work than Bruce is, he’d be less likely to find himself unable to act in a split second decision time, so long as Bruce uttered the magic words: this is an utter necessity for the sake of your family.

Also ironically, btw, I think one of the key ways that a lot of people perceive Dick and Bruce as different....I’d disagree and say is actually where they’re MOST alike. And that’s that people point to Bruce as closed off and tightly guarding his emotions, hurts, and vulnerabilities at the expense of getting close to people or letting them in.....whereas Dick is more of a people person. But honestly, I disagree. I think people overlook that Brucie Wayne is still as much a part of Bruce Wayne’s life as Batman is. Bruce is and always has been completely capable of being the life of the party and surrounding himself with droves, on a surface level. I think Dick takes it perhaps a bit further than that, he IS more approachable than Bruce in general, that sorta thing.....BUT when it comes to his most private emotions, hurts and vulnerabilities.....I think Dick is just as inclined as Bruce to keep those parts of himself closely guarded and he doesn’t LIKE giving them up. The actual difference between them IMO, again comes down to the role other people play in their ways of thinking.....as I think that the times and reasons Dick DOES open up about his most closely guarded thoughts or emotions....its for other people, because he’s convinced himself that THEY need this from him. Left to his own devices, or at least the perception that he’s the only one likely to be affected by whether he shares his most intimate self with someone else or not, I think he’s just as likely as Bruce to well, not.

And all of this is key to why I think that Damian tends to have a lot more in common with Dick than Bruce, whereas others in the family have more in common with Bruce than Dick. Because see, Damian, like Dick, is more likely to ACT as a result of other specific individuals rather than his own personal sense of right and wrong. Look at when he first came from the League of Assassins. He had a clearly defined view of right and wrong, an already formed morality of his own, even if it was diametrically opposed to most of the Batfam’s, particularly Bruce’s. 

Damian didn’t set all that aside because people succeeded in just uniformly shifting his paradigms to be more in line with their views of right and wrong. The changes to his moral code came as a trickle down result of him ALREADY adjusting his actions or behavior - even before he necessarily came to view them as wrong - for the sake of the connections he was building, with Dick, with Alfred, with Steph, and then from there with others.

Just like I outlined with Dick, where he’s more likely than Bruce or many others to act on even something HE believes is wrong, if he views it as a necessity for the sake of a loved one.....Damian is similarly likely to act in a way that completely flies in the face of everything he came to Gotham already believing....if he views it as a necessity for the sake of the individuals he came to value. Just like Dick, simply starting from a different point on the moral spectrum. The sense of right and wrong that they ‘betrayed’ for the sake of other valued individuals was different....not the reasoning for that ‘betrayal’ of their previously established moral code.

Similarly, while Damian is just as inclined to be closed off and guarded as Bruce is (and Dick. and well, most of the Batfam shares this part in common, lol) - like Dick, when he does open up, be it to Dick or Alfred or Jon or Colin.....its because he’s convinced himself that on some level its what THEY need, rather than because he actually believes that he himself needs to let them in.

Meanwhile, the reason I say Jason is actually more like Bruce than even Damian is, lies in viewing Jason as falling somewhere between Dick and Bruce on a lot of this. Basically, I think that Jason is more naturally inclined to be more like Bruce in how rigidly he holds to a particular sense of right and wrong.....its just that the particulars of what they both view as right and wrong are different. Same thing with it being more natural to Jason to be like Bruce in terms of guarding his emotions. But in both instances, he’s still ENOUGH like Dick, as opposed to Bruce, that he does still adjust his emotional behavior and how likely he is to act on or against his personal view of morality.....for the sake of valued individuals. It just doesn’t come to him AS....naturally, I guess, as it does to Dick, and thus he’s not AS fluid as Dick in these things....but he’s still MORE fluid about them than Bruce. And that’s why even though it takes a LOT to budge him from his view of the right and wrong approach to vigilantism, he IS still willing to put aside what he does still believe is a necessity or right....if that’s what it takes to have his family in his life, etc.

To be clear - I am trying to not cast any particular judgments on any of the approaches to morality here....simply just, not the aim of this post. I’m more trying to view things analytically here, so when I frame Bruce as being the most intractable of the lot here, the least likely to budge his morals or act against his personal sense of right and wrong for the sake of loved ones, its not because I’m trying to say that he DOESN’T love his family, or even that he loves them any less than Dick does, Jason does, etc. And I’m not even trying to suggest that he’s wrong for his approach. I’m literally just....exploring the WHY of it.

And for me, that tends to go back to the singular difference between Bruce’s later childhood, after his parents’ deaths, the period between ages 10 and adulthood.....versus the childhoods of his various children around those same ages, or after their parents’ deaths.

Because these are the ages when most of us most fully develop the....intricacies of our personal moralities, when we explore and shape how our behavior stems from that sense of right and wrong and when and where we act on our beliefs, etc. 

And the key thing about Bruce during this period of his life, IMO, is that at the time.....he had very few specific INDIVIDUALS who played significant emotional roles in his life and in his mind. Bruce cares about people. Absolutely. A lot. But for a lot of the period in which Bruce shaped a lot of his personal moral behavior, people were almost as much an abstract to him as morals themselves. That’s not quite the right way to put it, but I mean, its more like....there was a kind of uniformity to the way he viewed people as a whole, because there were less individuals specifically standing out from the rest, as PARTICULARLY significant to him himself....and thus likely to influence his growing moral code.

The other key factor is the people he DID have valued emotional connections to at this point, like....they had a kind of permanence that stretched back to early childhood for him. They weren’t NEW additions to his life. While I believe that his parents’ deaths absolutely was formative for him and left him with severe abandonment issues....for Bruce, these abandonment issues were specifically geared around fear of losing people to death. He was already rooted in the same place, same life, same people, that he was before his parents’ death, that part of his life didn’t change.....and thus the people who were left to play large emotional roles in his life and worldview, like Alfred and Leslie.....he might have been afraid of losing them the way he lost his parents, but he wasn’t especially of losing them for other reasons. Specifically: I don’t think Bruce grew up during this time feeling any particular fear of losing someone like Alfred - a staple of his entire life - to, say, Alfred judging him for his choices or his morals.

As a result, Bruce grew up shaping his personal view of right and wrong and resulting morality-stemming behavior, on pretty much nothing BUT those morals and ethics themselves. And there wasn’t any particular NEED to shape those morals AROUND the people he valued in life, or likelihood that he’d lose them due to differences in opinion or ideology, like....with all of this adding up to be the reasons HIS moral code and behavior is less fluid than even most peoples’. Because there wasn’t really any reason for it NOT to be. There were very few people and thus few occasions, while still DEVELOPING all this, that made him feel that he was maybe on the wrong track, or that he needed to make room for exceptions or the possibility that he might need to adjust his views or behavior in these regards.

In contrast......Dick, Jason and most of the others all came to Bruce after significant upheavals in their life that necessitated basically starting over in an entirely brand new environment with brand new people, etc. So they lacked the specific aspect of the PERMANENCE Bruce felt in regards to his own valued loved ones during this period of his life. So unlike him, where he had a bit more space to contemplate his moral code and behavior without being particularly afraid of getting it wrong or that his choices here might cost him these people.....Dick, Jason, et al like....they formed their moral codes and behavior with significantly more awareness that many of the people they valued already had fully formed codes of their own they felt very strongly about...AND at the same time, they had REASON to be....less secure about whether or not the choices they made here could potentially cost them these people.

Which is a perfect recipe for the kind of moral fluidity based around specific individuals, that I maintain most of the kids display to various degrees. In fact, you can almost kinda....chart the extent of their moral fluidity, via various factors like the QUANTITY of significant emotional attachments in their lives at this time. Like I maintain Dick is the most morally fluid based on people.....but that I think has a lot to do with the fact that Dick had the most attachments to....protect or preserve. Even though he was forced to live apart from his extended circus family, they still very much figured into his thoughts as people he cared about and valued, and then there were Bruce and Alfred, and then Clark, Barbara, the Titans, etc, etc. 

In contrast, look at how Jason came to Wayne Manor with very few pre-existing emotional attachments with anyone still alive.....and the fact that Jason during his time living with Bruce didn’t really even have occasion to form a large number of attachments outside of his immediate family, as he wasn’t on any teams unlike Dick, and he didn’t mingle all that much with other members of the hero community. Ergo, Jason’s LESS morally fluid than Dick simply for the reason that like Bruce, he had more reason to construct his personal morals around simply his own perceptions and convictions, and less people he felt this moral code and behavior needed to acccomodate, or be prepared to make exceptions for or around. 

Meanwhile, I’d argue that Damian is like Jason in that he had fewer people to build into his personal view of right and wrong and how and when to act based on that.....BUT a key difference here is that Damian didn’t have a lot of experience pre-Gotham with feeling valued and valuing other individuals in turn, like...at all. The connections he developed with Dick, Alfred, Steph, etc.....they were brand new to him, basically a revelation in a lot of ways, because before that we’ve seen how he was often taught to dampen his view of how valuable or not to view personal connections.....whereas Jason, pre-Wayne Manor, like......we know that he DID very much have a strong emotional attachment to Catherine that he embraced and was not hesitant to value, etc. So my point here being that the sheer NEWNESS of what Damian was feeling in regards to even WANTING to adjust his behavior based not on what he THOUGHT was right or wrong but based on the PEOPLE he was coming to value....this was a complete shock to the system to Damian in ways that it wouldn’t necessarily have been for Jason, resulting in a likelihood that Damian would feel an enhanced INTENSITY around all this that Jason might not, and thus despite both of them having similar NUMBERS of emotional attachments they shaped their changing and developing moral codes around, these people carried an additional weight for Damian, just as Jason’s few carried an additional weight that Bruce’s didn’t have due to the differences in THEIR upbringings in this period of their lives.....and thus resulting in Damian having an even more fluid moral code and behavior than Jason did....closer to being on par with Dick’s, just as Jason still has a more fluid one than Bruce does.

ANYWAY.

This was a LOT longer than I thought it would be when I started a little post about huh weird how I don’t see Damian the way a lot of other people do BUT SINCE WHEN IS THAT NEWS.

In conclusion, this has been a post.

Good day.

[santaclausdeadindian]

Sorry for doing it this way, I think OP deleted their post or blocked me like a mature, balanced person would, so I have to tag you in

@mr-laugh

Oh boy, lot to unpack here.

So you didn’t even know there were that many subgenres of fantasy, one of the most popular classifications of fiction on the planet... And you think you know enough to tell ANYBODY what classic fantasy is?

And where exactly I attempted to do that, huh?

If you don’t even know the most common subgenres of this vast pool of fiction, why are you jumping into this discussion? You just admitted you don’t know anything!

There is no discussion, there is a stupid ass post. Don't flatter yourself, you don't know jack shit.

Me not knowing what exactly are the precize subgenres of a genre of literature, which, btw, are completely arbitrary and for your information, sword&magic is a legitimate category, has absolutely nothing to do with what that post you were so keen on agreeing with above. It was you who said pretty much any classic fantasy is like that: some poorly written, self-indulgent and borderline racist.

Did ya read the link, buddy? Howard talked about knowing what burning black man smelled like. He was quite approving of these things! And the books are pretty racist, it’s not hard to see, unless you ain’t looking.

Yes, I started reading and by the end of the first paragraph I was convinced he was ahorribly racist man. And? Still doesn't change the fact, that for my 12 year old self, there was nothing racist about it. I definetly wasn't looking for it, that much you got right. If I'd read it again, I'm sure I'd catch on to it now, that I know what kind of asshole he was. So the implied racism would be there. You got a point for that.

Rugged individualism? It always amuses me how that argument always pops out of the mouths of guys who are aping what they’ve heard their buddies say. If ten thousand mouths shout “rugged individualism”, how individualistic are they?

Then you should amuse yourself by looking up why this thing crops up as of late. It's coming from certain, supremely racist yet unaware of it publications that claim ridiculous shit like "rugged individualism" is a hallmark of white supremacy, among other, equally laughable things, like punctuality. It's a joke.

Again, I will give Howard to you, if someone that racist writes a black man saving the hero of the story, I bet there was something else still there to make it wrong.

Conan’s not some avatar of rugged individualism.

Uhm, yeah, he pretty much all that.

He’s as unreal and unrealistic as the dragons are,

It's called fantasy for a reason, buddy.

but more dangerous because White Men model their ideas of reality on Big Man Heroes like him;

Glad you are totally not racist, yo!!! It's such a relief that White Men are the only ones with this terrible behavior of looking up to larger than life, mythic superpeople and nobody else. Imagine what it would be like, if we would have some asshole from say, hindu indian literature massacering demons called Rakshassas, by the tens of thousands, or some bullshit japanese warlord would snatch out arrows from the air, or a chienese bodyguard would mow down hundreds of barbaric huns without dropping a sweat, or some middle eastern hero would fight literal gods and their magical beasts in some quest for eternal life.

it's a poison that weakens us, distracting us from actually trying to solve the world’s issues, or banding together to deal with shit.

This is what you just said. It's up to the white man, to get their shit together, be not racist and solve the world's problems, because those poor other people's just can't do it. If we would just not be oh, so racist, then China would surely stop with the genocides they are doing now, or blowing more than half the greenhouse emissions into the athmosphere, the muslims would stop throwing their gays from rooftops or ramming trucks into crowds and would just start treating women as equals, India's massive rape problem would be gone, subsaharan African would be magically bereft of the host of atrocities committed there on a daily, yeah, you sure have that nonracism down, buddy!

A rugged individualist would be smart enough to realize that even the most individualistic person needs others; no man’s an island, and a loner is easier to kill.

Individualism doesn't mean at all what you think it means, it's a cluster of widely differeing philosophies that puts the individual ahead of the group or state, it's ranging from anarchism to liberalism and is also has nothing to do with my point.

Central Europe?  What, Germany?  Because let me tell you, historically they are SUPER concerned about race!

Germany traditionally considered western european, central europe would be the people stuck between them and the russians, to put it very loosely. We are equally nonplussed by the self-flagellating white guilt complex and the woe me victim complex of the west. We did none of the shit those meanie white people did to the nonwhites and suffered everyting any poc ever did and then some. We don't give a shit about your color, we care about what culture you are from and if you respect our values.

I’m an American from a former Confederate state; trust me, race is everything.  It always is.

No it really isn't. How old are you? Asking without condescension, genuinly curious, because if you are in your low twenties at most, it's understandable why you think like this.

See that hike? Do you know what happened at that time that made virtually all american media suddenly go all in with racism?

Occupy Wall Street, that's what. It's a brilliant way to sow victimhood and hate and desperation amongst the people who have one common enemy, the powers that be, the banking sector, the politicians, the megacorporations.

Can't really blame you if you are in your early 20's at most, you grew up with this bullshit hammered into you. If you are older, step out of your echochamber please!

If you actually believe, that mankind doesn't progress naturally towards a more accepting society purely on the merit of there being more good people than bad and sharing a similar living with all the hardships in life, seeing that our prejudices inherited by our parents are baseless, that's how we progress, not virtue signalling courses and regressive policies. I was raised as any other kid, I had a deep resentment towards the neighbouring nations, I said vile, racist shit against people who I actually share a lot of genes with, of which fact I was in deep denial about, and then as I gradually got exposed more and more actual people of these groups, I started to realize I was wrong and everybody should be judged by their individual merits. It works throughout the generations, my grandma was thought songs about Hitler and how all jews are evil in school, she legit thought all black people at least in Africa are cannibals and shit, my mother stillsays shit that would get her cancelled in the USA, and I will probably have a mixed race kid as we stand now.

This whole racism is an eternal problem is laughable and disingenuous and I am actually sorry for you that you feel like that.

Moving on. As for Dany, the “noble white girl sold to scary dark foreign man” is a very popular trope, especially in exploitation films, which Martin draws on much more heavily than most authors do.

No, he fucking doesn't. I already wrote a bunch of examples from the books you seeminly ignore willfully. First of all, she is sold to those olive skinned savages by a white man, who is a terrible, increadibly evil man. He want's to fuck the then 11-12 ish Dany so bad, she picks his slave most resembling her and rapes her repeatedly, "until the madness pass." He also maimes children and traines them as disposable slave spies by the hundreds. There is no boundaries colour here, GRRM prtrays all kinds of people as reprehensible, evil and disgusting. Just like you can find plenty of examples to the opposite.

What is he drawing from your exploitation movies exactly? He writes about the human anture, he writes about the human heart at war with itself, that's his central philosophy of writing.

ASOFAI is basically just a porn movie with complicated feudal politics obscuring it, which is probably why it worked so well as an HBO series (up until the last two seasons or so.)

There is no gratuitous sex scene in the books, the rapes are described as rapes, they are horrible, they are very shortly described and usually just alluded to.

The people commiting them are not put into generous lights and one of the single most harrowing stories hidden behind the grand happenings of the plot is a girl named Jeyne Poole, whose suffering although never shown, is very much pointed out, along with the hypocrisy of the people who only fight to try and save her, because they think her a different person.

Honestly, if you actually read the books and they came of to you as porn, you might want to do some soulsearching.Btw, the HBO series was a terrible adaptation, it immedietly started to go further and further from the books with every passing season and the showmakers made it very clear to everybody, that they didn't understand the very much pacifist and humanist themes of Martin. And neither did you.

We also get no indication Essos will eat it when Winter comes; hell, they seem to not know Winter exists, given the way people act, even though that is also unrealistic and weird.  Essos was just super badly designed, and Dany is a terribly boring character.

to be continued

[ryouverua]

Trial 6 - Flashfiction (4)

FLIP THAT CHESSBOARD, SWEETCHEEKS!

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3

it’s what kokichi would have wanted

DRV3 HOW DARE YOU HOLD OUT ON THE CUTEST DAMN TSUMUGI SPRITE OF THE ENTIRE GAME

how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real

And we found it in Kokichi’s lab of all places. Why? Had he been able to get access to it ater all? Why was it just lying there so awkwardly - not hidden or neatly put away at all, but just tossed on the floor like an afterthought?

...... thinks about the state of Kokichi’s dorm room

yeah the chance that he left it on the floor like a bored 12 year old or me is not 0%

Wait.... is there??? The only one that stands out to me is the method of applying vs being scouted...

So we go over the events again, or as the game would probably put it, comb over The Longest, Most Ridiculous, Most Despairing Backstory to look for discrepancies.

Don’t look so pleased with yourself!

YES THANK YOU SHUICHI THANK YOU FOR STOPPING HER BEFORE SHE GOT STARTED AGAIN

It.... it doesn’t???

as;dflksdjf

U-Uuuuh Monokuma??? Are you just allowed to namedrop the title like that???

A-Anyway, this one was sort of vague - not sure if the game did too good a job of hiding it or not, but I certainly didn’t clue into this immediately because, well, I’d argue that Junko was ultimately the cause of this? And she was the original Ultimate Despair, even if Mukuro got roped into it with her? This felt a bit like being at a multiple choice exam where there are a few answers that are sort of right but not exactly right and then I cry

AND MUKURO!!! I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS MUKURO ERASURE, DAMN IT!!! can you tell she was one of my favourites in the first game if not my favourite

“And that’s why, even though you are technically right, you are also wrong, and therefore will not get any points for your answer to this question.” sweetcheeks you sonuvab -

despite the mukuro erasure, consider me team maki

“Can it, nerd.”

It would have been really nice to have Maki in the first game.

We really are going over this piece by piece.

Okay, so now we’re reviewing the first game. They were forced to kill each other, then Junko was found out and killed herself in the end, which led to the eventual end of the Despair side....

Shuichi is clearly onto something that I haven’t quite latched onto yet. 8′D

This makes me think of how cool it would have been to have this text style in the previous games. Have I mentioned enough about how much I like the typography in drv3? Because I don’t know if that’s possible.

OOOH that’s right - I forgot! Or, well, I didn’t forget, but it didn’t really occur to me that we were remembering that they were literally trapped in the school by Ultimate Despair, I guess.

I guess the gist of it is that they’re remembering - well, not witnessing the events, but being told things were one way vs another. They would have been too young to have been alive at the time though, right? It seems to me that, though the game clearly wants us to take it a different way, we can also interpret this as them just being told the wrong thing within the memories themselves as opposed to the actual memories being entirely falsified. What if the reports at the time or the commonly-known story was that they had been locked in by Ultimate Despair, and it’s only the properly researched books like this that have the correct accounts? It’s not exactly an uncommon phenomenon for there to be widely-held mistaken knowledge/generalizations of famous events, unfortunately... 8′D

Anyway, I’m getting distracted because like I said, this is really not the angle the game is going with at all.

BULLSHIT

AND ALSO

WHY WOULD A BOOK EXIST THAT DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS THE MEMORIES YOU GAVE THEM

LIKE

WHY DOES IT EVEN EXIST IN THIS PLACE AT ALL

I’m seriously fixated on this book!

also

I love Shuichi just casually ignoring Junko!Tsumugi lmao

I’m calling her Junko!Tsumugi I refuse to call her Tsumugi!Junko I REFUSE TO GIVE UP ON TSUMUGI’S AUTONOMY

This.... this one has to be it, right? This was the one thing I remember getting really confused by when they talked about applying! In fact, I had thought the whole reason Shuichi was considered the Ultimate Detective was because of the homicide case and if that resulted in him being at Hope’s Peak, it was because word of that had traveled - but then if it was an application, that means either his parents or his uncle would have applied on his behalf, right?

this was a detail I remember remarking on and loving btw I got really sad when in Chapter 5 it started looking like they were all in the same class

I think more than the others, this is the big one. All that other stuff can be attributed to mistaken hearsay - but this? This is something they would have ‘directly experienced’.

Oh apparently he chose to come... despite feeling awkward about his title.

I wonder if he was pressured into it by his family....?

Or, uh. Let me correct myself. I wonder if, in this mistaken memory, he remembers being pressured into it by his family?

I-I feel like I would trust the book over you guys especially considering the whole ‘we remembered Kokichi Ouma as a Remnant of Despair and got him killed as the fake mastermind’ situation tbh.

well technically ultra despair girls is

That is a good point. I mean, it could quite possibly happen underground, but I suppose the same could be said of the Jabberwock Island one - there’s no reason that should be public knowledge.

“I mean, I know it’s nothing new, but bear with me here.”

H A L L E L U J A H

REALLY

REALLY

MAKI, REALLY

YOU OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW BETTER

FUFCKFUCKING HELL GUYS YOU’RE KILLING ME HERE

sdfkdslfj fukging

noOOONONO

aND YOU! YOU SHUT UP TOO!!!!

“Also have you seen their outfits? Do you realize how terribly they would clash? ‘Oh Saihara, why would that matter what do uniforms have to do with anything surely Kokichi and his uniformed clown posse could just be a branch under the Remnants’ NO THAT WILL NOT FLY WHEN THE HEAD OF THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION LITERALLY DOUBLES AS THE ULTIMATE FASHIONISTA!!!”

this level of reasoning is possible for saihara shuichi

.... what do you think, everyone?

And he still has the Supreme Leader title, even if these aren’t really their talents... there has to be something to that, right?

Shu -

Shuichi

The words DICE were written in big words over his giant hella awesome throne

He has a checkered scarf which brings about a certain ‘game’ feeling

he literally challenged you to card games

I’m.... I’m just gonna throw it out there, but there’s a pretty good chance the group he led was called ‘DICE’.

YOU SAW THE VIDEO YOU SAW IT DAMN YOU MAKI I KNOW YOU’RE BETTER THAN THIS YOU ARE SMARTER THAN THIS!!!!

“Maki also said he literally said he didn’t know what she was talking about when she interrogated him with a crossbow literally aimed directly at him but surely that’s unrelated -”

s o b s

I 100% bet Tsumugi was not counting on them finding this room. So.... beginning the trial, she tried to do a Kaede/Kaede’s twin mastermind thing. Then she switched tactics to being solely ‘Junko’ and her lackey Kokichi setting up the game with the last survivors of humanity as... revenge for Hope’s Peak, I guess? Or something.

So where are we going from here? Are we about to discover this was all a simulated scenario then?

Sort of like they’re trying to test different outcomes and scenarios - with different talents, maybe? Is there the selected 16 (15? 14?) talents that can be switched around at will, or is there a larger database of students’ talents? That’s what I really want to know.

But “there are an endless possibilities for lies,” a certain person may say.

why are you all ganging up on me also how when two of you are literally the same person and the other one is an AI acting as an extension of you -

It sort of hit me but this is a weird echo of Korekiyo’s trial, with Junko and Tsumugi switching back and forth with each other the way Korekiyo and his sister did. I wonder if there’s something to that, or if it says something about Tsumugi in general...

(one hangman’s gambit later...)

TALENTS ARE NOT THEIRS AND POSSIBLY ARBITRARY CONFIRMED

I WOULD KILL FOR KOKICHI TO POP OUT OF THE GRAVE TO SHOUT IT’S A LIE RIGHT NOW

FUCK YOU BEAR

ghggkhgkh

that is a dangerous precedent to set

But you weren’t planning on revealing this, right??? Right???? Your hand was totally forced! Don’t play this off like it wasn’t!

I swear I had a similar idea when I was coming up with how they could see themselves in photos/pictures if the students weren’t actually who they thought they were - about how their brain filled in the gaps and placed their own faces where they’d expect to see them (like in the funeral scene with the portraits, etc). Glad to know I was kinda right on that regard!

I really like it when they combine Junko and Tsumugi here. There’s probably something to that - when it’s Tsumugi herself acting as the mastermind, as opposed to just being ‘Junko’.

T-Those are some pretty big inconsistencies though? Why would there be incorrect options in those flashback lights in the first place? What was there to gain for their being options where ‘Ultimate Despair trapped the first class in’ and ‘Junko is the end-all of Ultimate Despair’? At least Kokichi’s made sense to have on standby, but the other stuff? Isn’t their existence a bit weird?

It’s... nice to see Shuichi focusing on Kokichi. Being posthumous and all it’s a bit late, but it’s still nice - especially after all that talk of ‘not understanding him’ and ‘the embodiment of a lie’, having him finally clue in to Kokichi’s real place in all of this - a victim of the mastermind - is good. It’s the perfect example of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ and Kaito figured that out last chapter, so it’s long past due for Shuichi to drag himself and everyone else to that conclusion, kicking and screaming if he must.

(he was jealous of Angie)

because he was trying to stop the game!!!!!

Which, honestly, was pretty clever on her part. I think overall Kokichi will come out of this looking the best - he had so little going for him and almost succeeded in his coup - but the fact that Tsumugi was able to counter his surprise attack still says a lot about her own intelligence and her ability to adapt, because in that moment she also had limited options.

THANK

YOU

LORD

WE HAVE GATHERED HERE TODAY TO SAY FAREWELL TO REMNANT!OUMA THEORY

REST IN PIECES AND NEVER COME BACK

Pretty damn successfully, too.

While the fact that her first inclination was to straight-up murder Kokichi was very Not Good, it’s at least good to know that it took the extra nudge of the flashback lights to push her over the precipice. Basically, it took turning Kokichi into a complete monster in her eyes - Despair with a capital D - to strip away his humanity entirely. I do wonder if she still would’ve staged a rescue mission of sorts to rescue Kaito? For that matter, I wonder if Kaito had been on the outside (with the Flashback Light used on him and everything) and it was someone else being held hostage like Shuichi, would he have been able to talk Maki down?

It’s interesting how they’re turning hope itself into a weapon here. I think Junko talked about this in the first game, the idea of giving hope out to maximize despair, so it’s not the first time the mastermind has actively used hope as a weapon - but it’s never felt quite as dirty as it does here.

!!! We’re seeing her as herself in the room!!! I guess it’s the flashback light classroom, but still!

That is so unfair considering they were all being threatened with death, you were straight up messing with their brains and also that airlock exists??? And they straight-up collapsed after being exposed to the outside??? I’m 

I think Shuichi managed to break away from that a bit at the end... maybe. He seems more motivated by righting the wrong in Kaede’s case at this point, and of avenging everyone who died - but the same can’t be said of the others.

Man I even wondered what it would be like without Kaito and Kokichi there considering they’ve been the strongest ‘movers’ on both sides - and the answer ended up being ‘I’ll give you artificial motivation to act’.

SHE’S.... REALLY A KILLING GAME FAN GIRL AFTER ALL..........

Oh, this does feel dirty. She’s lusting after them in an abstract way - like pieces on a chessboard. Kokichi was able to compartmentalize and make people take certain actions to an extent, but even he had attachments that he wasn’t able to shake. I knew it felt like she had managed to keep herself from getting too close to them, with the sole exception of the protectiveness she felt for Gonta (which?? I want to know if we’ll hear anything about that specifically???) but this is... wow.

Actually, this is very Komaeda-esque isn’t it? She wants to see them succeed in their battles against each other in a similar way...

Junko only gets that look when she’s actually mad. So if Tsumugi is sporting that... well, she must be smarting a bit underneath all the gloating she’s doing. She was happily spouting off ‘hints’ before, right?

Oh??

me too tbh

OH THE TURNABOUT MUSIC IS HERE

THAT TRANSITION WAS SO GOOD AND SMART WHAT A GREAT WAY TO USE THE PORTRAIT STAND

oooh! OOOOH! OH WHAT A FANTASTIC POINT!

SHUICHI MY BOY YOU’RE ON A ROLL NOW! GET HYPED GET HYPED GET HYP -

AAAAAAAAAAH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hajimemed

[hydrus]

Version 324

windows

zip

exe

os x

app

tar.gz

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a great week. The downloader overhaul is almost done.

pixiv

Just as Pixiv recently moved their art pages to a new phone-friendly, dynamically drawn format, they are now moving their regular artist gallery results to the same system. If your username isn't switched over yet, it likely will be in the coming week.

The change breaks our old html parser, so I have written a new downloader and json api parser. The way their internal api works is unusual and over-complicated, so I had to write a couple of small new tools to get it to work. However, it does seem to work again.

All of your subscriptions and downloaders will try to switch over to the new downloader automatically, but some might not handle it quite right, in which case you will have to go into edit subscriptions and update their gallery manually. You'll get a popup on updating to remind you of this, and if any don't line up right automatically, the subs will notify you when they next run. The api gives all content--illustrations, manga, ugoira, everything--so there unfortunately isn't a simple way to refine to just one content type as we previously could. But it does neatly deliver everything in just one request, so artist searching is now incredibly faster.

Let me know if pixiv gives any more trouble. Now we can parse their json, we might be able to reintroduce the arbitrary tag search, which broke some time ago due to the same move to javascript galleries.

twitter

In a similar theme, given our fully developed parser and pipeline, I have now wangled a twitter username search! It should be added to your downloader list on update. It is a bit hacky and may be ultimately fragile if they change something their end, but it otherwise works great. It discounts retweets and fetches 19/20 tweets per gallery 'page' fetch. You should be able to set up subscriptions and everything, although I generally recommend you go at it slowly until we know this new parser works well. BTW: I think twitter only 'browses' 3200 tweets in the past, anyway. Note that tweets with no images will be 'ignored', so any typical twitter search will end up with a lot of 'Ig' results--this is normal. Also, if the account ever retweets more than 20 times in a row, the search will stop there, due to how the clientside pipeline works (it'll think that page is empty).

Again, let me know how this works for you. This is some fun new stuff for hydrus, and I am interested to see where it does well and badly.

misc

In order to be less annoying, the 'do you want to run idle jobs?' on shutdown dialog will now only ask at most once per day! You can edit the time unit under options->maintenance and processing.

Under options->connection, you can now change max total network jobs globally and per domain. The defaults are 15 and 3. I don't recommend you increase them unless you know what you are doing, but if you want a slower/more cautious client, please do set them lower.

The new advanced downloader ui has a bunch of quality of life improvements, mostly related to the handling of example parseable data.

full list

downloaders:

after adding some small new parser tools, wrote a new pixiv downloader that should work with their new dynamic gallery's api. it fetches all an artist's work in one page. some existing pixiv download components will be renamed and detached from your existing subs and downloaders. your existing subs may switch over to the correct pixiv downloader automatically, or you may need to manually set them (you'll get a popup to remind you).

wrote a twitter username lookup downloader. it should skip retweets. it is a bit hacky, so it may collapse if they change something small with their internal javascript api. it fetches 19-20 tweets per 'page', so if the account has 20 rts in a row, it'll likely stop searching there. also, afaik, twitter browsing only works back 3200 tweets or so. I recommend proceeding slowly.

added a simple gelbooru 0.1.11 file page parser to the defaults. it won't link to anything by default, but it is there if you want to put together some booru.org stuff

you can now set your default/favourite download source under options->downloading

.

misc:

the 'do idle work on shutdown' system will now only ask/run once per x time units (including if you say no to the ask dialog). x is one day by default, but can be set in 'maintenance and processing'

added 'max jobs' and 'max jobs per domain' to options->connection. defaults remain 15 and 3

the colour selection buttons across the program now have a right-click menu to import/export #FF0000 hex codes from/to the clipboard

tag namespace colours and namespace rendering options are moved from 'colours' and 'tags' options pages to 'tag summaries', which is renamed to 'tag presentation'

the Lain import dropper now supports pngs with single gugs, url classes, or parsers--not just fully packaged downloaders

fixed an issue where trying to remove a selection of files from the duplicate system (through the advanced duplicates menu) would only apply to the first pair of files

improved some error reporting related to too-long filenames on import

improved error handling for the folder-scanning stage in import folders--now, when it runs into an error, it will preserve its details better, notify the user better, and safely auto-pause the import folder

png export auto-filenames will now be sanitized of \, /, :, *-type OS-path-invalid characters as appropriate as the dialog loads

the 'loading subs' popup message should appear more reliably (after 1s delay) if the first subs are big and loading slow

fixed the 'fullscreen switch' hover window button for the duplicate filter

deleted some old hydrus session management code and db table

some other things that I lost track of. I think it was mostly some little dialog fixes :/

.

advanced downloader stuff:

the test panel on pageparser edit panels now has a 'post pre-parsing conversion' notebook page that shows the given example data after the pre-parsing conversion has occurred, including error information if it failed. it has a summary size/guessed type description and copy and refresh buttons.

the 'raw data' copy/fetch/paste buttons and description are moved down to the raw data page

the pageparser now passes up this post-conversion example data to sub-objects, so they now start with the correctly converted example data

the subsidiarypageparser edit panel now also has a notebook page, also with brief description and copy/refresh buttons, that summarises the raw separated data

the subsidiary page parser now passes up the first post to its sub-objects, so they now start with a single post's example data

content parsers can now sort the strings their formulae get back. you can sort strict lexicographic or the new human-friendly sort that does numbers properly, and of course you can go ascending or descending--if you can get the ids of what you want but they are in the wrong order, you can now easily fix it!

some json dict parsing code now iterates through dict keys lexicographically ascending by default. unfortunately, due to how the python json parser I use works, there isn't a way to process dict items in the original order

the json parsing formula now uses a string match when searching for dictionary keys, so you can now match multiple keys here (as in the pixiv illusts|manga fix). existing dictionary key look-ups will be converted to 'fixed' string matches

the json parsing formula can now get the content type 'dictionary keys', which will fetch all the text keys in the dictionary/Object, if the api designer happens to have put useful data in there, wew

formulae now remove newlines from their parsed texts before they are sent to the StringMatch! so, if you are grabbing some multi-line html and want to test for 'Posted: ' somewhere in that mess, it is now easy.

next week

After slaughtering my downloader overhaul megajob of redundant and completed issues (bringing my total todo from 1568 down to 1471!), I only have 15 jobs left to go. It is mostly some quality of life stuff and refreshing some out of date help. I should be able to clear most of them out next week, and the last few can be folded into normal work.

So I am now planning the login manager. After talking with several users over the past few weeks, I think it will be fundamentally very simple, supporting any basic user/pass web form, and will relegate complicated situations to some kind of improved browser cookies.txt import workflow. I suspect it will take 3-4 weeks to hash out, and then I will be taking four weeks to update to python 3, and then I am a free agent again. So, absent any big problems, please expect the 'next big thing to work on poll' to go up around the end of October, and for me to get going on that next big thing at the end of November. I don't want to finalise what goes on the poll yet, but I'll open up a full discussion as the login manager finishes.

[lokgifsandmusings]

Definitive Ranking of Book 1 Episodes, #8/12

8. 1x10 “Turning  the Tide”

Baby cramps, heroic sacrifices, turn-based combat, and some quality time for Hiroshi and Amon. 

If you read my last definitive ranking, you knew this episode was coming next. And full disclosure: I actually don’t overly mind it. I think the pacing is pretty decent and moves, the interpersonal tensions are...unfortunate though understandable given everyone’s perspective/history, and it raised the stakes of the season in a pretty tangible way.

Now, that said, this is also the episode many point to as where the wheels sort of came off in terms of the main plot. Amon bombed the city, and immediately all nuance was stripped from the narrative. The Equalists went from having a point, but going too far in their pursuit of their definition of justice, to being more one-note villains looking to break Republic City. From Nolan’s Bane to Lady Shiva, if you will. (I’m probably wrong about this comparison in some way.)

TEC is really good right now btw. And interestingly Nolan’s Bane is rather like this Ra’s.

What’s dangerous about this criticism is that it can veer into “well it’s not what I wanted territory.” But I truly don’t think it’s controversial to say that the best potential this season offered was digging into the nonbender vs. bender conflict and how the latter group’s privilege was creating quite the untenable society. I mean...that’s what the antagonist and the Equalists were built on, after all.

What’s weird is that Bryke did seem to want to tap into that, at least somewhat. “When Extremes Meet” showed the oppression of the masses in a pretty stark way, and a way that specifically evoked police brutality in our world. It’s impossible to separate Tarrlok rounding everyone up from today’s cultural context. Hell, even the series opener had Korra pointing out how the city was “totally out of whack”, because it was. She witnessed extortion and the domination of the triads first-hand, not to mention arbitrary “no fishing” rules when there were people who clearly were struggling to feed themselves.

In “And The Winner Is...” Amon painted the shock gloves as a means of liberation. Then there’s also a very valid reading of debending as “disarmament”, particularly when Amon was just targeting triad members. His debending of Tahno undercut his point, but there was some neatly spun bullshit about the bending-worship culture and Tahno being a symbol of all that was wrong.

I guess what I’m saying is that there was a very strong, consistent thread regarding the nonbenders’ plight and relegation from positions of recourse. There was room to debate Amon’s method and desired outcome, and obviously that room was filled with characters like Asami who would never blame benders as a monolith or join the Equalists, yet still were committed to justice. Granted, she was only given her father as a sounding board for those beliefs and it was framed in a very personal, rather than systemic way, but we at least know people like Asami exist, and are probably in the majority. (The full stadium for the probending final suggested that, for example.)

So what the hell were Bryke thinking when they had Amon and Hiroshi bomb the city? We’re not talking a targeted attack on the police department either...we’re talking a major bombing campaign that looked pretty damn arbitrary.

It’s like...they came up with a way to script the world that would have rejected Korra as a symbol (as her arc demanded) and challenged her to find her own voice and place within it. They also came up with an antagonist that was chilling in the way that you could see people signing onto his campaign, yet was out of balance in his method of achieving equality. But then Bryke were worried that given these two components, they didn’t have a way to argue our protagonists’ side for them or something, so they just...had the Equalists bomb everything.

It’s frustrating, because Amon’s targeting of council members and the policemen were effective parts of the episode. It was clever how they went about doing that (down to the exterminator-in-disguise and giant magnets), and the action surrounding those two events worked. Yeah, we had a weird turn-based combat thing going with Mako, Korra, Bolin, and Asami outside of the police department, but it also showcased their individual abilities and their collective action as a team outside of a car.

What boggles my mind is that Bryke had the perfect mouthpieces through which they could have dug into the implications of the story they were telling: Pema and Asami. I know I’ve complained about the wasted potential in their one shared scene before, and probably too much for most people’s liking. But come the fuck on; these are the two most prominent nonbenders in the show (at this point), and the focus is Pema’s baby cramps instead of us hearing it articulated why they can’t side with Amon—why it is that his methods are too extreme.

I think what’s worse too is watching this in 2018. Fighting back physically against oppressors and dismantling corrupt systems is a whole lot less of a hypothetical thought exercise than it used to be, and more like issues and decisions we may well have to grapple with. So let’s hear a word put in for nonviolent resistance! Let’s see what the counter ideas from the nonbending perspective look like. And for the love of god, let’s have people actually object to Amon��s various puppy-kicking moments. Hell, he and Hiroshi could have even had a conversation about the “necessity” of what they’re doing! It could become clear that Hiroshi disagrees, but is kind of in for a dime, in for a dollar, and blinded by his own personal grievance.

Ugh, I’m doing fix-it fic again, aren’t I? But these are very valid storytelling options that were ignored. Hiroshi just became the guy who provided tech, rather than someone who could have like...challenged this a little. Make him singularly focused on wiping out the triads, and it can become increasingly clear that his “acceptable loss” meter is wayyy out of balance, while Amon has no true interest in being remotely measured and is after every bender. Idk, I’m just spitballing here, but I do feel that actually digging into this would have made his ultimate defeat more satisfying. And the off-screen presidency less of an ass-pull and more something that came out of a dialogue introduced in Book 1.

None of these problems are contained to “Turning the Tides,” I should note. “Skeletons in the Closet” had very bizarre aftermath of the bombing, and also introduced personal stakes for Amon that were entirely separate from the cultural dynamic the season was digging into. Like it’s a fine story that he was cynically capitalizing on it for his own purposes, I guess, but then there was so little between him and Korra that any larger point was missing (unlike, say, Kuvira who was also personally driven, yet a perfect foil and actively “taking over for Korra” in Korra’s mind).

It’s just that “Turning the Tides” truly lived up to its name; it was the episode that scrubbed all nuance away from the plotline, even wrapping up the plotline was notably “worse” in terms of quality of the show.

What’s odd is that despite this, it was still fairly enjoyable, and not just because it gave us our first whiff of Makoperator.

As I said, the two bigger action sequences were good. Asami and Mako’s ongoing fight was not exactly compelling TV, but still gave Asami a fair bit of agency and was “realistic” enough for teenagers. Lin agreeing to protect Tenzin’s family shows us that once again she’s Too Good™ for literally everyone around her, and of course her sacrifice at the end was completely gripping. Too bad it gets undercut.

The worst that can be said outside of the implications is that the fart-bending was cringe-worthy, and I’ve yet to figure out a rationale for the necessity of that failed Equalist invasion during Pema’s labor. Rohan wasn’t even given a name like “Aemon Steelsong” where the situation of his birth affected anything. I guess it was cute to see Ikki, Jinora, and Meelo’s capabilities, though we also get that in “Endgame” (sorry, Lin).

Altogether, that’s why this episode ranks as back-middle. I can’t really complain when I’m watching it...just when I think about it.

But again and again I keep coming back to the main issue of the season: Bryke didn’t understand what they wanted to say. Not for Korra’s arc at all, and now as this episode demonstrates, not for the tensions introduced.

It was a cool concept, but this is the moment that marked it for just that, and nothing more.

#12 1x12 “Endgame”

#11 1x05 “The Spirit of Competition"

#10 1x11 “Skeletons in the Closet”

#9 1x06 “And The Winner Is...”

1x10 photo recap found here

Book 2 ranking/essays found here

Book 4 ranking/essays found here

[paraphernaliawagon]

Diary for 7/29/20

i just realized in one of my rants about that stupid fantasy novel i’m not actually writing (in those “diary” posts i used to write when i was high... haven’t written one in a while) i said my fictional prehistoric wizard civilization wasn’t supposed to be based off any real-life ancient civilization... and then listed “the hyborian age” as an example of the sort of thing i meant? the hyborian age where robert e. howard CODIFIED the “fantasy counterpart culture” trope as it is used in much of modern fantasy? that he explained in the essay of the same name that is one of THE most racist things i’ve EVER read? THAT hyborian age? was i fucking high? (oh shit i was) back to the drawing board.

(my other example, neveryon, was better. it’s for the most part a fairly believable imaginary picture of what a late-neolithic civilization could have been like. including the emergence of powerful technologies and social forces such as money, writing, weaving... and slavery... and anti-slavery movements... and bdsm relationships that play-act slavery... these books get into some really heavy topics. they are more discourse on philosophy, economics, and sociology than traditional fantasy adventure story, yet also extremely readable with engaging characters. and a lot of explicit gay sex... not all of it pleasant or consensual. i will always recommend people read samuel r. delany. i think he gets overlooked on places like tumblr when people talk about black and/or gay sf and fantasy writers because his books are difficult and upsetting. but not pretentious. some people who aren’t willing to really engage with books that challenge them and are really different from what they’re used to call him pretentious. but actually (in my opinion) he has this really great ability to write about seemingly “pretentious” topics in an accessible way. (it’s the power of storytelling baybee!) he is absolutely one of the most revolutionary sf and fantasy writers there is. what i want to write is more traditional sword and sorcery than neveryon but it is still a big influence on me.)

what i would consider actually good worldbuilding is kinda rare even in the fantasy books that i really love. i’m trying to figure it out on my own which is hard. inspiration from older works is always leading me down the wrong path. (obviously i gotta branch out more and read better books. almost all of my faves are from before 1990 and almost all of them are by white people)

(btw the niithians are gonna be sorta minoan-inspired in some ways. like their use of aquatic motifs in their decorating, and some of the fashions (no exposed breasts though, sorry. well, maybe on special occasions) they are also inspired by america but in a non-obvious way. some of their architecture is inspired by the stuff that mcmansionhell posts. but in a non-obvious way where it still looks like fantasy architecture it just has certain things in common with mcmansions. like too many different window shapes, a clusterfuck of a roofline, too much beige etc.

today i was thinking about this story by fritz leiber i read once. i don’t remember what it was called or anything about the plot. the only thing i remember is that it takes place in a future (50-100 years in the future i think) where american social norms about modesty have changed so dramatically that women now wear masks whenever they’re in public BUT have no qualms about exposing their breasts. that’s so fucking stupid. like, yes, cultural norms about which body parts are obscene are totally arbitrary BUT there is absolutely no plausible reason they would suddenly change so drastically within a particular country. i think this was written in the 50s (could be wrong). so he was a bit ahead of his time because that kind of thing is like quintessentially New Wave SF. “oh i gotta make sure to mention that all the women are topless because you can get away with that in science fiction now! welcome to the 60s mama” leiber is a hellava writer but seems to have not had a high opinion of women in general. he died in the 90s. coincidentally one of the inspirations for zoal and marrhia is “fafhrd and the grey mouser if they fucked.” OR “conan/elric crossover but they fuck.” which i actually tried to write about once in college based on some amazing fanart i saw and a dream i had about said fanart. it sucked. i could never have done justice in words to what their sex would have looked like

here is the fanart in question

my dad got me conan the barbarian #14-15 (with the actual for real crossover with elric) for my 14th birthday. these comics were not in good condition to begin with and i read them so many times that they can no longer be handled without bits crumbling off (happens with comics that are 40+ years old sadly. the paper they were printed on in olden days was very poor quality.) this is a great story because conan and elric spend the entire time they are forced to work together for a common goal bickering nonstop while the wizard’s daughter whose name i forget (who gets killed of at the end for no good reason) tries to keep them on task. it also had a memorable villain, terhali the green empress,who you can see above. i wanna know what spell turned her green. she is melnibonean so presumably she was born with a human-like skin tone. the greenness is never explained.

[ramon-balaguer]

Terry Crew's tweet morphs into a message that makes it seem like he believes Black Lives Matter could become a statement of racial superiority.

Sounds Great to me because #AllLivesMatter to God, you and me my brother. Btw, this is the Unfortunate Truth, that the Only Black Lives that Matter to #BLM or #BlackLivesMatter or #BlackLivesBetter are the ones fit their Leftist narratives and Rhetoric. You, me, Black on Black crimes, and anyone speaking against their junk or speaking for anything else DON'T Matter and is a Distraction and an Offenseive to them. They'll try Blacklist you for this, condemn you and call you everything from Uncle Tom to House Nigger to Fraud & Traitor to You Ain't Black and anything else they can come up with, but a child of God. But God Bless You for Speaking Truth to Power and Hope folks will see the err of their ways and Turn from their Wick ways; and God Bless US and our American Dream of ALL Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. :( REBTD

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

[transcendental-signified]

Everyone's so ready and willing to challenge and problematize every social institution except monogamy as if monogamy isn't neatly bound up in heteronormativity and misogyny as if it isn't intricately bound up in capitalist notions of ownership and totally antithetical to the ideal of bodily autonomy as if monogamy isn't a social institution at all but nooo yall keep thinking it's perfectly healthy not inherently selfish and controlling to demand someone's complete and unerring affection like if yall tried to do this about literally anything else besides love or sex like for example going out to dinner with a friend you'd consider it abusive but you dont wanna look at sex and love the same way for socially contrived arbitrary reasons that have a lot to do with misogyny and western heteronormativity and capitalism and it's so exhausting for non-monogamous people to navigate in your fucking world and constantly be told that we're bad or see media about "cheating" (which the very word implies economic connotations BTW) or those absolutely atrocious romance films where the woman has to "choose" between two partners like do you honestly understand how damaging that is???? Do you have any idea how much it fucking hurts and how it tears your self worth to shreds?? To always see yourself represented as the evil one or the "manipulative" one or assume that all relationships borne out of "cheating" are loveless and based on lust alone? You all take monogamy as the only essentialist thing on this earth and it's awful. I'm so tired.

[mcmansionhell]

McMansion Hell Does Arch Theory Part 2: The Ancients vs The Moderns

Howdy folks! Today in architectural theory we’re going to get to one of the first examples of serious beef between two guys who wore the 17th Century equivalents of coke-bottle glasses and black turtlenecks. (I’m gonna guess it was powdered wigs.)

The beef, later canonized in theory as the “Ancients vs the Moderns” occurred between two dead French dudes: Nicolas-Francois Blondel and Claude Perrault. 

Way less steamy than Team Edward vs Team Jacob, but we’ll work with it. 

Player 1: Blondel

Francois Blondel (b. c.1618, d.1686) was a military leader, engineer, mathematician, diplomat and architect. He was appointed by Louis XIV to become the first director of the newly formed Royal Academy of Architecture in Paris. His main task as director was to design the school’s curriculum and pen a textbook. 

The incredibly French frontispiece of the of said textbook (Blondel’s Cours d’Architecture, c.1674) Public Domain. 

Architectural thought at the time revolved around the theory of Vitruvius as far as the role of the architect and further established the three Vitruvian qualities (firmness, commodity, and delight) as the main criteria for great architecture. However, theorists, especially Blondel, turned to Renaissance concepts of beauty as being something universal and absolute, and the idea (after Alberti) of “harmonic proportions.”

An academic at heart and a traditionalist to a fault, Blondel believed in the absolute perfection of the work of the Ancients, as exemplified by the temples of the Greeks and Romans. He was, you know, that guy.

Player 2: Perrault

Claude Perrault (b.1613, d.1688), was a guy who, for most of his life, was not the type to start architecture slap fights. He spent the majority of his career working as a surgeon and anatomist - not as an architect. 

Perrault got roped into architecture through Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s Minister of Finance and Superintendent of Building, whose secretary (Charles Perrault, famous for being the father of the fairy tale) was Claude Perrault’s younger, more handsome brother. 

In 1666, Colbert, acting on behalf of the king, asked Perrault to do a new French translation of Vitruvius for use as one of the textbooks for the newly formed Royal Academy of Architecture. In 1667, Perrault was appointed (by Colbert) to a three-person committee responsible for preparing a different design for the East Wing of the Louvre, which had been suspended after the design prepared by the Italian architect Bernini got dumped for not being French enough. 

When a building’s Wikipedia page looks something like this, you know some serious sh*t went down. 

Perrault’s concept for the East Wing was totally different than the architectural canon of the time: 

Drawing from Blondel’s (a different one) Architecture françoise, 1756. Public Domain. 

Looks like just another old building, right? *leans into mic* Wrong.

Perrault’s design choices were unprecedented in French classical architecture, and even though his design (he took credit for the work of his colleagues almost immediately) was one of sophistication and visual lightness, the use of unusually thin visual proportions was basically taboo af. 

And where did Perrault think it was a great idea to explain his design choices? In the gosh dang footnotes of his 1673 translation of Vitruvius, which was to be used by the kiddos at Blondel’s school. 

Perrault’s Footnotes

This smug asshole opened up his defense with what seems to be two sentences formulated specifically to piss off Blondel the most:

Gothic architecture, which left behind little primary source documents (dark ages and all that), was totally refuted by the French academy as being ugly, overindulgent and grotesque. 

(Photo taken by me!)

Perrault went on to justify his decision by appealing to Vitruvius’ description of the temple of Dionysus by the Greek architect Hermogenes, who devised for it a flexible system of proportions using the diameter of a column as a unit of measurement. Basically, argued Perrault, proportions were relative, and not absolute. 

Perrault added (throwing some serious shade) that because the Ancients didn’t harp on Hermogenes for doing something different from the then-canon of architecture, Perrault himself shouldn’t be harped on for the same reason. (Also because his cool new engineer stuff expanded the structural capabilities of architecture but whatevs.) 

Blondel’s Response

Blondel’s response to Perrault’s argument in his 1683 Cours d’Architecture textbook (that’s right: all this fighting was done in footnotes and textbooks instead of face to face like normal people) was:

Which was basically 17th century academic speak for:

(yes this is still in my drafts)

Perrault’s Response to Blondel’s Response

Perrault in the &#&@ing footnotes of the second edition (1684) of his translation of Vitruvius, offered these counterarguments to Blondel’s criticism:

It is FAKE NEWS that we’re not “allowed” to deviate from what the Ancients did and that by doing so we’d only invite “””””disaster”””” also btw the Ancients were new in their time. (checkmate atheists traditionalists)

It’s dumber to close the door on good invention than it is to open it “to those who are so ridiculous that they will destroy themselves.”

If the Ancients were perfect and architecture is perfect, are all those other arts and sciences that have improved upon the past totally wrong???

Just bc the goths did some tacky crap, they still created spaces that were open and full of light and we should’t hate them for it. 

Bummer: Perrault got the last laugh because Blondel died. (RIP)

However, Perrault wasn’t done messing with architectural norms. In 1683, he published a super important treatise by the extremely catchy name of “Ordonnance for the Five Kinds of Columns after the Method of the Ancients”

Perrault’s Last Stand

Perrault, in his treatise upended two major beliefs in architecture: the myth of so-called harmonic ratios, and the idea of absolute proportions. 

Perrault, who made a career as a surgeon and studied anatomy, refuted immediately the idea that visual ratios worked the same way as musical harmony (an idea that goes back to Plato) by citing the obvious fact that the eye and the ear don’t work in the same damn way. 

Long before the beginning of neuroscience, (and tbh he was kind of pulling this out of his ass) Perrault claimed that we don’t process visual stimuli in the same way we process auditory stimuli, in that visual stimuli plays a much larger role in how we perceive and interpret the world, adding that responses to visual dissonance are much less visceral than responses to aural dissonance. 

More importantly, Perrault claimed that there were two types of beauty: positive and arbitrary.

Positive beauty consisted of things pretty much everyone could agree on: e.g. symmetry; the “magnificence” of a building, and the quality of its construction and materials. 

Arbitrary beauty introduced the idea that beauty is relative to one’s cultural customs, as well as to the fashion of the times, and the weird inner-workings of people’s taste. Perrault claimed that the idea of “correct” architectural proportions is largely influenced by one’s customs, and therefore falls within the category of arbitrary beauty. 

Well, that does it for this week’s bit o’ theory. Stay tuned for next week’s installment, as well as Wednesday’s continued trek through the 50 States of McMansion Hell, with a guaranteed awful house from Illinois. 

If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon! Not into small donations and sick bonus content? Check out the McMansion Hell Store - 30% goes to charity.

WAIT

I want to share with y’all this hysterical McMansion interpretation of the Vitruvian triangle from last week’s post created and sent to me by my new bff David Larsen:

Have a good week everyone! 

[togekissies]

i read the red queen today.............. and, i mean, i read all of it in one day, but i didn’t like it much and i don’t know what i’m gonna tell sarah tomorrow lol (she’s been bugging me to read it)

the premise is: the peasant class (”reds”) has red blood. the upper class (”silvers”) (not all are nobles) have actual silver blood, and with it, neat powers. the silvers force reds that don’t have a job or apprenticeship by age 18 to conscript in the war that’s been going on for 100 years blah blah blah. before anyone asks, yeah, the author’s white.

the main character, mare, is a red living in poverty. she has no skills other than pickpocketing, so she steals things for her family. she’s 17 and knows she’ll be sent to war when she turns 18. she has a younger sister that can embroider, which is a lucrative trade. she also has a male childhood friend who is annoyingly cocky. the story opens with them going to a mandatory event meant to show off the might of the silvers, to scare the reds into submission.

YUP, it’s so blatantly inspired by the hunger games it makes me wonder if it didn’t start off as fanfic.

mare doesn’t get sent to fight to her death or anything--she actually gets a job as a servant by happenstance, serving the silvers. her first day on the job is the... whatever dumb name for the queen choosing ceremony the book had, where basically the noble houses send the ~most talented~ daughter to show her her super awesome powers to try to get one of the princes to want to marry her. and mare, predictably, ends up demonstrating she has powers over electricity even she didn’t know about. (the twist was so damn obvious, like, the fuck)

oh, and she gets the nickname “little lightning girl” from this. hello again, thg.

blah blah in order to hide that a red has powers they decide to claim she’s the lost daughter of a noble house that died out recently, and betroth her to the younger prince. 

it started out kinda interesting? but i couldn’t really shake how the premise was that an actual superpowered human caste was oppressing a non-powered human caste, and the way the narrative presents as the best way to fight it is by... giving some of the oppressed caste powers too. like, it just misses why thg worked. the citizens of the capitol weren’t any better than the citizens in the districts. they were just born into riches. the red queen tries to make us (via mare) care about the silver nobles, by making them feel human, but... they are biologically different from the reds. for no good reason? they have the literal power to destroy innocents with their mind--and a lot of them do!--and that’s why they’re incapable of seeing the reds as fully realized humans. by making the caste system involve ACTUAL SUPERPOWERS......... it really doesn’t make me appreciate the whole “but it turns out murdering silvers is wrong too, it turns out sometimes they have families and feel the occasional human emotion :(” bit the book tries. there’s just no overcoming that power imbalance, why is why the goddamn main character has to get superpowers of her own. 

also, some of the names are just. hilariously first draft. like the author got too attached and kept these hilariously bad names. for example, the town mare comes from stilts. fuckin STILTS. because the buildings are built on stilts, you see. cause i think it’s built on marshy land or something? idfk. then we have characters named will and lucas next to characters named kilorn and ptolemus. there’s just no consistency to it. even within mare’s own family: her siblings are gisa, bree, tramy, and shade. like............. what? honestly i like the punchiness of mare and shade and would have liked to see that sort of thing throughout the reds, while the silvers can get the fancier names. 

oh god and you can totally tell which scenes the author thought of and wrote first, before writing the rest of the book, cause they feel a bit jarring. they don’t quite match, like instead of rewriting or even scrapping them, the author jammed them in to make them fit. 

not only that, but i feel like mare is a weak protagonist. not because she’s actually weak or anything, but because i can’t get a good grasp on her character. you can SO tell the author was trying to write a katniss type character, but trying to shove katniss into acting like a noble wouldn’t have worked, so the author just kinda... makes mare good at it, for no reason? like she gets one morning’s worth of etiquette lessons and then is thrown to the wolves and doesn’t actually do a bad job. it’s so jarring because the mare in the first few chapters i read as always up for a fight, if she needs to. well, it’s textual she always runs if she gets in trouble, but she was down to tussle if she couldn’t. and she’s snappy. but this hardly ever manifests after she has to pretend to be silver, and it devolves into political drama, which i feel the mare of the first few chapters wouldn’t be suited for, and her character changes accordingly. at first mare seemed like an interesting character that wasn’t TOO much like katniss, but now she’s just kinda... half a character.

oh, and the other twists were kinda super predictable, and not in the fun and exciting way they can be if you see them coming. like (SPOILERS) her brother shade not actually being dead. god did i see that coming from the moment someone was like “btw ur bro’s dead.” or maven actually being evil. that felt like hans from frozen all over again. with slightly more hints, but still--the actual betrayal felt super out of left field cause it was all one character telling mare “i don’t trust him” and maven’s mask never ever slipping around her. 

speaking of maven (the second prince, ftr), i can’t tell who he’s supposed to be if this is a thg au. maybe an oc or something. cause the au peeta is obviously the older prince that mare is ~REALLY~ in love with. oh and au gale isn’t actually an irritating piece of shit, mostly cause he has no actual character. this book is about as long as thg is, but it sure sucks at establishing character & dynamics quickly. 

not to mention! basically ALL of the main players in this story are dudes, except for au peeta’s betrothed and the queen, both of whom are baddies. and the leader of the rebels is a woman too, but she has noooo characterization. she’s tough i guess? oh and there’s a female side character who is captured and then takes a cyanide pill.

the aesthetic this book tries to portray is weird, too. like i think everyone is supposed to be wearing kinda medieval-y clothing? but they have technology. like, they have airships and radiation detectors. au peeta fuckin invented a motorcycle. it seems really arbitrary too, since they have lightbulbs and shit but i don’t think they have computers? so like........... how

oh and there’s a line in there about rebellions and sparks becoming fire and shit. it’s so. just. how did it end up in the final copy. just. just cut it. don’t wear the “thg au” badge pls

the writing seems fine, though i have some gripes. like mare will start a paragraph saying one thing, then repeat it at the end like it’s supposed to be a revelation. uh... no? some lines feel really awkward and out of place. it’s in first person present, which i was surprised to discover. most people don’t do either of those things, much less both at once. i don’t actually hate first person like most people seem to (why...?) and write in present tense myself, so i’m cool with it, but i feel like the story isn’t done any favors by being in mare’s head, since, again, i don’t feel like she’s actually a solid character. third person limited may have served this story better. actually i feel like this entire book should have reached the editor and the editor going “alright. now rewrite the entire thing, from scratch.” woulda had a stronger product. 

i know there’s two other books in the series, but i don’t really have much hope it gets better because my biggest gripes are with the premise itself. i’m down for the “young girl destroys and oppressive government” story, hell yeah, i’m not sick of it yet. but damn. do it well. and can we let the katniss and the johanna get together for once? thanks.

[justbloodcamthings]

(Boundaries anon back again.) Keith has anxiety and/or depression, yes? I know when I read through your other asks and you said that Lance was not a mentally healthy person. I'm wondering if you had to define his mental disorders, what would these be? (I'm asking questions such as these because I could not quite grasp what was going on sometimes. That is probably due to my lack of knowledge with asexuality, which btw thank you for references. They helped a lot.)

(Glad the resources helped!)

When it comes to their mental health, they’ve both got “things” going on. We see the depth of it and the effects of it in Keith the most because its his POV, but I try to shows Lance’s side as well (with varying success, I think).

I write them as follows:Keith has dysthymia, though I think now they term is Persistent Depressive Disorder (here’s a short overview of it: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/persistent-depressive-disorder/home/ovc-20166590). Unlike Major Depressive Disorder, the symptoms are milder and easier to manage, though also because of this a person can go years without being diagnosed and getting help because, “well, it’s not that bad I can deal with it”. Keith also has periods of seasonal depression that hit worse during the fall and winter months, while giving him some respite during the spring and summer. Occasionally different things can trigger a depressive episode, sometimes totally arbitrary things or things that shouldn’t be negative (i.e. the way he got snippy and avoidant when Lance came to live with them was partially because the sudden change threw him off balance). Keith ALSO struggles with issues of sensory overload (which is why he can’t always handle much of anything directly after work, he deals with a lot of noise at work and it gets to be too much and when he gets home he needs quiet to get his brain to stop buzzing and calm down. Too much sensory overload can shut him down completely), and he has some trust issues but he deals with those with a cynical outlook in an effort to pre-empt the bad feelings (this person is going to leave me eventually, they don’t actually mean it when they say they like/love me, everything is going to fall apart anyway) which doesn’t show up often but... And yes, Keith does have anxiety but it’s not as generalized, its rather pretty specific to situations (for example, meeting Lance’s family - it’s similar, even if its not the same, to how he’s met families before and he gets a resurgence of the worry and anxiety he used to feel when he was younger and getting shifted from home to home. Oh, and the whole “what is going on with Lance why am I like this why do I like him why did that have to happen?” moment was definitely a hit of anxiety). 

Lance has Generalized Anxiety Disorder, though it’s mild at the moment. It does lead to thoughts of low self-worth, worrying whether he’s ‘good enough’, worrying that he’s a failure, that sort of thing (which is honestly directly influenced by his life experiences - his anxiety began developing when he was uprooted to move to the US and its been with him ever since). He has his ways of dealing with it, and currently its not giving him any severe issues in life though there are some hiccups along the way. He’s had moments of brief depression in response to situations he’s been through (mainly during his Garrison time and directly after when he was in his lowest period of self worth), but those were fed more by his anxiety disorder and insecurities than an actual depressive disorder. He also has trust issues, and combined with the anxiety that leads him to being snappy and/or blowing up over sometimes minor things that his brain blows out of proportion. He knows he does it and he knows he should try to keep from doing it but brains are weird things and its difficult for him in the moment. He has a tendency to overdo the ‘apology’ period afterwards (though he isn’t the best at verbal apologies so he rarely actually says he’s sorry for big things, but then he over-apologizes for little things).

I hope that helps! If you are still unsure/confused by specific instances in the stories just let me know, and I can explain why I wrote them the way I did (especially in regards to Keith). One thing I can say is that I tried to write Keith’s Dysthymia/PDD as true to my personal experiences with it and that it isn’t the way you always see depression being written in stories (at least the ones I’ve read). But yeah, if you have any specific questions feel free to ask!

[spamzineglasgow]

(SPAM Cuts) ‘9 Months’ by Tam Blaxter

In this SPAM Cut, Desmond Huthwaite examines the queer politics and poetics of temporality and its gendered reproductions through Tam Blaxter’s (she/her, they/them) poem ‘9 Months’, which you can read in the new Datableed here. 

> Supposedly, there are 24 hours in a day, 12 months in a year and *Zizek voice* so on up to 1000 years in a millennium. In what exactly are there 9 months?? The obvious answer is pregnancy: 9 months, then, in human gestation, in child manufacture. Yet – unlike in the above tautologies where units of time refer back to nothing other than other cold, hard units of time – when time is made to inhabit the fledgling human body, the results are nowhere near as straightforward or predictable as the neatly inward-looped curves of the number 9 (which by this stage is starting to look a bit like a curled finger beckoning the poem coquettishly from above) would have us believe. Like treefungus, when the embryo splits itself it sometimes ‘grows 2 fast’; like the first letter of the first word of the poem, babies sometimes fail to show up on time. Even before we’re born, then, we have a queer relationship to time. The queerness of time and bodies is, I think, everywhere in Tam Blaxter’s poem.

> What can a poem do in/with/to/against 9 months? Reverse the subject-object positions of that question, and we seem to have an answer straight away: ‘xisting in the inbtweens exhausting yeh but/ also smthng like l i g h t n i n g /’. Being between – nonlife and life, orgasm and organism, nothingness and somethingness – is tiring. Happily for us, nobody remembers how exhausting their own biological formulation is. But epigenesis is just one of life’s many exhausting liminalities: we all know how much of a drag falling (the gerund is crucial: this poem is about process not state) in lust can be (and this poem is absolutely about lusting); some among us will also know how draining the process of rebirth (like first birth, often complete with new Christian name and passport) can be. Yet both procedures are also electrifying.

The fantasy of total reintegration into the body, hooked up to someone else’s brain via umbilical cord, is no less tantalising than is wanting intimate coexistence with another body, a different sort of hooking-up. But do we kno hw to tlk abt any of this? I’m reminded that every use of language is also a kind of reproduction (of ideas, affects, even selves), and when it comes to desire (especially what we desire with and for our own bodies), putting into words is never an easy birth. Desire is like a flash of l i g h t e n i n g (the staccato sort that lights up your bedroom but can’t actually be seen): the linguistic referent (thunder) comes a full 9 seconds after the fact, and even then only rumbling and indistinct. Anyone who’s ever waited while someone fumbls a pronoun will know how exasperating, how painful (like a mild electric shock), how dreadfully expectant 9 seconds can be (it’s not an overstatement to say that 9 seconds can feel like 9 months). When processes such as desiring or becoming are at stake, as short a timespan as 9 seconds, or as long a duration as 9 months, can do all sorts of things to the human body.

Whosoever accidentally kneed themselves in the nose as a child will know that bodies are treacherous. Bodies, especially desirous ones, don’t do as they’re told. And typically the first thing the body is told: “it’s a [insert a gender marker as arbitrary as the arrangement of 12 months in a year (soz astrologists)]!” For Judith Butler, this is a classic example of the performative utterance; a statement which makes bold on its claim to represent the natural and incontrovertible precisely by willing that natural and incontrovertible into being verbally. Language can birth all manner of bewilderment for the body, constricting around it like the waistband of a dress around a free-food-filled belly. But, through language, the body can also fight back with a few birthings of its own: the enunciation of benedicat (may he/she/they/it bless or praise) in the final line is able to explode that most anaemic of commonplace genderings by turning pink lips blue.

> Made to exist in the timeframe of heteronormativity which, Lee Edelman and others have argued, is structured by reproductive imperatives, trans bodies are apt to misbehave, as does the body of this poem. There isn’t space in a short review to do justice to Tam’s signature formal virtuosity. Suffice to say her syntax does to our sense of being a body in time what having a baby does to your morning routine. Words are shunted together and vowels squeezed out, precluding any possibility of a smooth reading. Misspellings and numericisations force us to question any attachments we might have to regularity of appearance; alternative organisations of the constituent elements of words do not hamper us from recognising words, they rather supplement the signifiers with some meanings and modalities of their own. Line breaks occur long after virgules (thanks btw to Tam, who is a terminological genius as well as a poet, for teaching me this word) and pauses within lines come in all shapes and sizes, shattering our sense of continuity and throwing us off our temporal balance as if our ears were blocked by a too-loud-for-comfort-free-wine-buzz. Thus, in its queer embodiment of a time period so uniquely associated with heteronormative self-promulgation, the poem is able to gest[icul]ate towards a life of its own – becoming a ‘flesh-song’ that far from ‘merely haunt[ing]’ registers with the viscerally physical thereness of a newborn baby’s scream.  

  ~

Text: Desmond Huthwaite 

Image: Oleg Magni

[michaelbennettcrypto]

Roubini is Having an “I Told You So” Moment With Crypto, But Bitcoin is up 62x Since his Call

It is no secret that Nouriel Roubini hates cryptocurrency. For most of 2018, the American economist has been smugly congratulating himself for denouncing the entire space as toxic and stating that prices were heading to zero. The problem is, Bitcoin is still up more than 60x since he first took up his anti-crypto offensive in 2014.

Temporary Bear Market Makes Nouriel Roubini More Self-Righteous Than Ever

US economist Nouriel Roubini has been all over the cryptocurrency news in 2018. He has been such a keen fixture in fact that he has been nicknamed Dr. Doom for his uber-bearish outlook. In October, for example, he put forward his own challenge for “most creative insult fired at Bitcoin” (an honour previously bestowed on Warren Buffet for his “rat poison squared” remarks) by calling crypto a “stinking cesspool”.

Later, he broke tradition amongst traditional finance-loving crypto naysayers by widening his offensive to include blockchain technology. Whereas most of those opposed to decentralised, non-statist currencies admit that blockchain tech is at least interesting, Roubini has penned a lengthy article attacking the technological innovation, titled “The Blockchain Lie”, which lambastes blockchain as being largely useless and completely over hyped.

Recently, as prices took a more severe nosedive than many were expecting them to, Roubini has once again taken to Twitter to smugly pat himself on the back for being “right” all along about Bitcoin.

Expect 1000s of crypto & blockchain ventures to go bankrupt. Almost all were total vaporware: they had no goods, services, products, software, apps. They stole the money & run. Crooks!

Bloomberg: Crypto Market Crash Leaving Bankrupt Startups in its Wake.https://t.co/G0Xzps4Qg1

— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) December 7, 2018

A high correlation btw how much the pompous carnival barker @APompliano talks up his fund that lost this year 90% of its value & how much Bitcoin/shitcoins in his fund collapse. Now BTC down to 3400. Maybe if he were to shut up for a while BTC may take a temp breather on way to 0

— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) December 7, 2018

Better late than never…some of us have been saying and writing about it for over two years

Why a Nobel laureate in economics thinks bitcoin is toast https://t.co/gTkELpw2Lf

— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) December 6, 2018

Aren’t We Forgetting Something Nouriel..?

The problem with Roubini’s “told you so-ing” is that he has actually been bleating the same old tune since 2014. If we look at BTC’s price performance over this period, instead of the one arbitrary picked by the US economist to support his own biases, we see that he has been proved anything but right. Bitcoin has shot from around $600 to well over $3,000. If we widen our lens further, we see that the number one digital asset is actually the best performing investment by far over the last decade.

In 2014, CNBC ran a story on Roubini and his pessimism about Bitcoin. The article stated that Roubini said the only use of the digital currency was criminal activities and that those transacting in it would immediately convert it back into dollars. Four years and almost $55 billion later, Roubini’s earliest attacks on Bitcoin look ill-conceived at best.

Included in the CNBC article was the following Tweet:

So Bitcoin isn't a currency. It is btw a Ponzi game and a conduit for criminal/illegal activities. And it isn't safe given hacking of it.

— Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel) March 9, 2014

The above sentiment has been proved entirely incorrect in the years since he posted it. Reports estimate that less than 1% of all Bitcoin transactions involve any criminal activity. Meanwhile, there still has not been a single incident of Bitcoin itself being “hacked”. Sure, there have been plenty of examples of exchanges being having their security compromised but that is entirely irrelevant. If the Royal Bank of Scotland had a security breach, do you blame the pound? No, that would be ridiculous. It is the fault of the institution being negligent in their security and nothing else.

No market ever travelled straight up and in four years time, it is highly likely that the criticisms Roubini levies at Bitcoin today will once again be proved entirely wrong. That would certainly be quite the imbroglio for the outspoken economist.

Related Reading: Tech Lead at Capgemini Defends Bitcoin Against Nouriel Roubini’s Testimony

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