#but also a lot that i thought was patently absurd (good stories will always have a good moral message etc etc)

[fuckdamn]

sometimes it’s refreshing to read a sincere well-written well-reasoned argument from someone you vehemently disagree with. it can good to hone your rhetorical skills instead of believing that everyone who’s ideologically opposed to you is some twitter-brained grifter who can only articulate vague disgust and aversion and otherwise falls back on redpill nonsense. sometimes people who disagree with me are intelligent people who have thought deeply about why they believe what they believe. and they’re still dangerously wrong lmao

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - Buff Boys Shirtless

Dec 2021 Wk 3

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs.

Ongoing Series - Thai

Bad Buddy (YouTube) Ep 8 - Official secret boyfriends being adorable and getting exposed. I’m live blogging it here.

Not Me (YouTube) Ep 1 - oh goodie, Gun is crying already! You know he is the prettiest crier in the biz. Normally, I’m not a fan of the separated twins plot, it too soap opera, but this one seems like a serviceable (if patently absurd) execution. It’s generating lots of tension and Gun can handle the acting chops required. I’m liking it, but Not Me is NOT your mother’s BL, it is way more Manner of Death-ish (read: gay romantic suspense). But like with MaxTul I feel like I am in safe hands with OffGun so I’m happy to be taken for a ride. (That said it’s getting flack on 2 fronts right now: Thai government & international kpop dumbass fans, so I wonder if it might get pulled or delayed for edits.) 

Paint with Love (Gaga) Ep 4 - Yoon really is good, no matter who he plays against. This ep the leads got tropes like beach frolic, there’s only one bed, baby is a floppy drunk, and The First Kiss. Actually it was a REALLY good kiss and the first time I got any chemistry from Tae & Singto. Will that save the show? Maybe. A good kiss can do that, plus we get domesticity in the next ep. Meanwhile, Phuket beaches look hella clean after a year of lockdown. 

Loveless Society Ep 3 - the actors are doing their best but the sound, post production editing, and script = absolute pants. It’s not a matter of watching but surviving this BL at this juncture. 

Between Us (YouTube) special 6 - omg they dredged up the daddy/boy trope for us to chuckle at. These specials are the gift that keeps on giving. 

(Japan got the memo)

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

Utsukushii Kare AKA My Beautiful Man (Japan - Gaga) Ep 5 - it’s still great (if you like this kinda thing, which I do). I LOVED getting Kiyoi’s perspective at last. Still not sure if they are gonna end this one happy or not. The suspense is killing me. 

Kieta Hatsukoi AKA My Love Mix-Up! (Japan - Viki/Netflix) Ep 9 - we jumped right back into the cartoon high school slapstick that is Aoki + first love. There’s something about this show that pushes absurdity to the limit but also stays so genuine and earnest about the high schoolness of it all. It’s a balance only Japan seems to be able to hit, and not all that often. Again, we’re in Cherry Magic territory. Oh and a quite cute first date was had! 

My Type (Taiwan indie - hard to find) Ep 7-8fin - they just leaned all the way into the ultimate puppy/cat pairing. It’s adorable. The ending was charming. Like if Mr X and I got courage, cuteness, and no censorship, but still kinda old fashioned Chinese BL but with no problematic tropes. What a bit of unexpected delightful fluff. Thank you, as always, Taiwan. 7/10 RECOMMENDED but it is VERY short. 

Mr Cinderella (Vietnam - YouTube) Ep 3 - the side dish couple are shaping up to be super cute. Another one to add to the list of pining since childhood. Honestly tho, is this Cinderella, as they are laying it out? I mean, I think we all thought the doctor was the prince. I’m confused. Meanwhile, is “bisexual awakening musical montage” officially a THING now? I think it might be. 

In Case You Missed It

Until We Meet Again is now on Viki. I think Wabi Sabi must have cut a deal with Rakutan, I keep seeing more and more of their stuff pop up there. 

Korean BL/GL production house STRONGBERRY (who released 6 titles via YouTube & Vimeo in 2021 including one of my favorites of the year: A First Love Story) announced recently that if they reached 100K subs on their YouTube channel, their next movie will release for free there. They are very gentle with their channel and never clutter up my Subscriptions with unnecessary content. So yeah, if you’re at all inclined please sub them.

BL 2022 Gossip - Thailand

Physical Therapy dropped a trailer, stars unknowns, starts Jan 23, on One31 Thailand with reruns on AISPLAY & GaGa. When a physical illness leads two hearts to meet, a young man and a therapist heal each other.

Heart by Heart is coming from Half Toast Production, adapted from the y-novel of the same name, stars all unknowns, teaser here. (Original trailer staring Gameplay is here, it’s now with a different production company and new cast.)

Work From Heart announced, stars Love With Benefits couple Gameplay and Folk, from DV8. A romance between two men set in the office.

One Love is rumored in production, billed as a BL sitcom (read: pulp) staring unknowns starts Jan 23 on One31 no word on international distribution. Follows the story of two young men who never stop flirting with each other.

Once In Memory a new short series (microfilm?) from Mind Trio got a teaser. It looks like it might be sad. 

MaxTul are indeed co-posting stuff again to their various social medias, which would indicate they are filming something together. ALL HAIL THE KINGS. 

BL 2022 Gossip Elsewhere

Taiwan announced The Ghost and I Becoming Family for 2022, a movie about gay and traditional marriage with a police officer who creates a bond between a human and a ghost. Stars Lin Bo Hong and (I think) Greg Hsu. (Back into early Chinese BL territory - Mainland China used to LOVE a gay ghost.) 

More promo material and rumors of an idol star in Korea’s Love in Spring. 2022 historical BL from WATCHA (Light On Me) which has started filming. Adaptation is based on the webtoon Spring of Crush by Noh Myung Hee. Plot: Hye Seong lives disguised as a woman because he seeks to flee the country, until one day a Geum Seong discovers his secret and falls in love with him. 

H I S T O R I C A L!!!!!! 

Next Week Looks Like This:

Reminder: Kieta Hatsukoi’s final ep, Mr Cinderella, and (hopefully) Not Me drop over this weekend. 

Upcoming 2021 BL master post here. I keep a full record there of everything I announce.

Adventures in miss-captions: 

“Do not spill any bean to anyone.”

~ Paint with Love 

After studying Thai for a while now, I get why they struggle with English plurals, but I still find it amusingly adorable especially when combined with an idiom. 

This week’s best moments?

Paint with Love giving us Singto’s career best BL kiss? That’s unexpected. 

(srsly Pharm? what happened to you?) 

[raguna-blade]

So, listening to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQqY7s1-pyo], and that got me thinking about Kingdom Hearts again as occasionally is the case. I’m still a bit steamed about 3 for one reason or another, and probably i should get the DLC down the line, maybe when/if I do a full series dive again since As i’ve kinda gone through it it’s occurred to me that i’ve been 1: Giving it an unfair shake due to personal disappointments, and 2: Giving it an unfair shake because god, please lord the story isn’t (when you get down to it) that complicated but these twists and nonsense make things really obnoxious and hard to track the themes and stuff which I think it does a good job on honestly but it makes it so hard to track sometimes i swear.

But this isn’t about that.

This is a fanfic idea, following the post game of Kingdom Hearts 3 and the idea is simple enough.

Sora falls into the Persona 5 setting, and ends up joining (or at least working with) the phantom thieves.

Including A Persona!

Including A Sweet Rebellion Outfit!

It’s Vanitas!

Wait, hold on.

So the general idea here is again, Sora ends up in the persona 5 world and ends up mucking around with that plotline. If anything, Persona 5R especially is probably a good fit for this considering Maruki and his goings on.

But really setting wise I dig the idea because first off the creatures in the heart of mankind are basically Heartless, Unversed, and Nobodies all kind of rolled up into one. One might make the argument if the worlds are supposed to be completely compatible that Persona’s are basically filling up the last part of the triangle of things that exist with Hearts/Heartless, Bodies/Nobodies, and Souls/Personas.

That last may seem a bit fuzzy since the Link doesn’t seem super straightforward, but it seems to be that the Soul in KH is an animating force in part but also keenly tied to thoughts.

Which lines up fantastically with Persona and Shadows! They’re basically entities made up OF thoughts really when you come down to it. Thoughts and feelings shape how they act, effect the world in general, and in great numbers and concentrations create absurd entities that are a sort of crystalized idea for good or ill.

So I think that part links up well enough yeah.

But what ends up happening though? Well for the moment, the general vibe is this. Sora, now set adrift and kinda just vibing out between worlds and of course desperately trying to cling onto something ends up losing his memories. Well...Not quite losing his memories so much as, he is incredibly damaged by the absolute clownery that he pulled at the end of KH3. That shit is not without consequences, and the fact that he’s not just hot erased really speaks to both Sora’s keen ability to do things that really shouldn’t be doable as well his other critical feature of being able to befriend basically everyone and everything if they’re willing to at least take a step along with him.

Enter Rage Form and Enter Vanitas.

Now I could probably do a whole thing about how Rage Form is essentially Sora tapping into the Powers of Darkness and yet not absolutely getting lost in the sauce like everyone else and why that is...And I will actually, you cannot stop me.

So my going theory in regards to using darkness in Kingdom Hearts is that Using Darkness is, as literally everyone points out, Absurdly Wickedly Dangerous...It is not, however, inherently evil as the games kinda make it out to be. We’ve seen several people use it without going full super villain, and indeed one of the major series leads Makes copious use of Dark Power.

The Problem with Darkness is that well...I guess the way to put it is, Darkness is basically concentrated Heart in a sense. It amps up E V E R Y T H I N G, to dangerous dangerous levels, and if you aren’t paying attention it will cause you to hop off the slippery slope in a hurry because you have to do the thing and you don’t feel any different so it’s obviously not effecting your mind. And it doesn’t precisely, effect your mind and make you evil....But it does cause you to lose restraint, to more or less give into passions to absurd dangerous extents that you may as WELL be evil.

Take Riku for example. He’s probably the clearest cleanest example because he has a whole arc with it, but fundamentally when he starts using darkness it doesn’t exactly make him start being an evil jerk it makes him do the exact same thing he was doing before (looking for his friends, looking for sora and kairi and trying to wake up Kairi especially at the time) and kind of not think, to not consider things that are patently obvious because it doesn’t jive with what he’s feeling at the time.

Basically Darkness (as I think is said at some point? but certainly implied) causes hearts to rage out of control and if you’re dumb with it, if you’re not highly extremely cognizant of this fact you absolutely are going to lose it.

Back to Rage Form, back to Anti Form. Anti Form first actually, and then we can go into Rage form.

See Anti form when it was a thing explicitly was never a thing Sora really had control over. It occurred with Drives yes, but it was always an accident (and notably get’s cancelled out when you fuse with Roxas in the Final Form but another thing) which tracks with the general antics going on with it. It nukes your drive gauge (which let’s you fuse with Donald and Goofy) and it’s actually rather weak on it’s own, in no small part because part of Sora’s whole thing is series wide is obsessively IGNORING how frustrated and angry and all that he is.

Kid has no idea how to actually use his rage in a constructive useful way. As a result, antiform while edgy and possessing some interesting qualities, isn’t really actually all that useful for untrained still stupidly uncannily powerful Sora (Like...I know it’s probably a whole other discussion but I kinda feel like the games both underplay how ridiculous Sora actually is while still at least kinda nodding at the fact that yeah this Kid has single handedly absolutely and somewhat literally decimated every single foe he has come across with disgusting ease? No one takes him seriously and then he’s basically breaking you across his knee, it’s hilarious)

But Rage Mode...? Rage Mode is actually QUITE handy. Offer’s a quick health boost, lots of teleport shenanigans (combo wise yes but hey) offer’s a move to get stronger at risk of health and is an emergency save both in game and story, and while the exact reasoning that he has it is never stated outright, I think it’s also fair to say that Sora as of 3 Is both Coming to grips with the frankly Absurd amount of bullshit that is laid at his feet when he really just wants to chill out with his friends and fuck off for a while (It’s a little unmentioned since Sora spends a large amount of time knocked the hell out but I’m pretty sure from his POV it’s been like the most hellish year possible)

Rage mode is Sora acknowledging the bullshit of his life and actively using it to do things and accomplish his goals, which at the time were basically beat the living hell out of heartless, nobodies and Xehanort (13 times)

It’s an active deal with darkness that may yet actually have severe consequences, but for Fic purposes, we connect from Rage Mode to Vanitas.

Now Vanitas is, for whatever else he may be (and the Unversed Certainly are weird), still a part of both Ventus and Sora’s heart. His Mirroring of Sora appearance wise (and indeed being the opposite of him in that While he may work with others he is decisively something of a loner I think, to contrast Sora’s Friends Everywhere thing).

And I thought, personally, when he was fading away at the end of KH3 that there was something of a lost opportunity. Vanitas was perfectly happy being Darkness, whatever that may exactly mean. But hey, if we’re going with my idea that Darkness=Heart Unrestrained here, then I think it’s not unreasonable to track what’s going on here.

Ventus and Sora both got extremely raw deals, and Vanitas unlike them was able to express that anger, rage, and just...Immense seething I suppose. Taken as a whole really, that’s more or less what his role WAS, to be the outrageous out of control fury of Ventus and Sora, targeting everything that hurt them which, frankly, was pretty much everyone and everything constantly (to say nothing of whatever is going down with the Mobile game for ventus who apparently is involved there so that’s you know...Not helping)

Vanitas being Satisfied as the Darkness of Sora and Ventus (and of course his own being) tracks then. He really would be fine kicking it because he was spent basically. Those two had more or less at that point burned out the rage and fury and overwhelming emotions, had brought it to heel, had taken it under control and all that.

But I can’t imagine Sora willingly letting someone fade like that. It’s not that he’s soft, or won’t put down bad guys. He absolutely will and does. I don’t think he’ll be happy about it, but he’ll do it, and I think if he has any idea of what’s gone down with Ventus and Vanitas he would be willing to, if the opportunity arose, basically give Vanitas a place to crash for all intents and purposes.

So. Remember when I said Sora has a Persona, a Rebellion Suit, and that it was Vanitas?

Part of the entire thing with Persona is, in fact, dealing with your shadow self. Shown primarily with dealing with negative aspects of yourself, but it involves all untapped aspects of you right?

Vanitas is a near perfect Shadow of Sora, being about as far on the opposite side of the spectrum as you can get. Arrogant, Self Absorbed, Callous, Lonely, yeah? But also, genuinely skilled and powerful, more than capable of reading others, and a solid lone operator. And thus, as a Shadow of Sora he’s basically perfect for a kid who is now on his own.

But Persona’s aren’t shadows precisely. I mean they literally are, but they’re shadows put to purpose, controlled, a specific mask put forward to the world to deal with it.

And Sora right now, alone, forcibly separated from his loved ones again, and much more permanently this time, turns to someone who he took in in his heart for perhaps not kinship at least commiseration. And Vanitas in turn responds in kind. Sora’s a nice kid but he’s not really properly in touch with the darker aspects of himself. This is a problem, not because ooooooo you gotta have darkness edge edge edge, but more because Sora has already USED darkness before. At the time it was safe enough because he was focused had a goal and all that.

But Now? Oh now Sora is basically in a situation where he might reasonably reach out for those dark powers and he is not in the right headspace to try and do that safely 1 and 2 I don’t think genuinely has a good enough grasp of his own less than great inclinations that could lead to him SCREAMING off the slippery slope into bad time junction.

Now Vanitas isn’t really fully doing this out of the kindess of his heart here. He want’s to do what he wants and that’s cause a degree of mayhem, get into fights, just in general kind of fuck off and do his own thing in the same way that Sora does except you know kind of more maliciously (though I genuinely suspect that a Vanitas without an immediate thing to do probably would just kinda...go somewhere and be moody. He seems the type. With a task though well different story, but sans one? And hey, the old man isn’t around to push him around anymore)

So Vanitas functionally becomes his Persona Here, which ties back to the way earlier mentioned point. Sora is a little broken here, but he has a certain understanding of both what’s going on with Tokyo when he get’s there (something stupid is happening at the bottom of mementos involving a heart. Guess it’s Heartless Stomping Time) even if he’s not fully on board with everything because of yet more missing memories, but for the moment, he doesn’t have the full power’s he really had before. He needs to lean on darkness here not just to stay as a whole person, but to also find his way home. And of course, this requires darkness.

Some of you may be seeing the grim and stupid pieces lining up here, so for you, just hold your head in shame and prepare the finger wagging.

So we have vanitas as a persona, more or less. Cool, fine.

And predictably, his rebellion outfit would more or less be a flavoring of Vanita’s armored up form, albeit probably a bit more kingly given Sora’s king motif.

But he’s not a royal here no. He’s looking for something. Going after a thing hidden deep in the darkness.

And as a proper phantom thief needs a code name, Why not call the guy who’s seeking something in the darkness. Why not call him a-

Why not Code Name Seeker for Sora the Phantom Thief eh? eh?

And that’s about the limit of what I got on this idea honestly. I know that Sora is still his lovable goofball self in a general sense, because Edgy Angst Sora isn’t really fun or I think true to the character really, but I think he’d probably be at the very least a touch more bitter than he has been, and perhaps for once in his life, just not feeling making friends at the outset. Up until a problem occurs and he see’s these other kids dealing with both unmitigated bullshit and being absurdly way over their heads.

Also, Yaldabaoth getting his carefully cheated game absolutely derailed, perhaps much sooner letting Maruki do his thing, perhaps letting him do a slower more thorough and less rushed job of things and having the Phantom Thieves + Sora + Akechi Have to deal with it is kind of fun.

Especially since Maruki as Antagonist in this case would be interesting considering probably 1, Akechi would Almost Certainly Be Alive (unambiguously), 2, Haru’s Dad would probably be alive leading to Shido getting his shit wrecked way sooner (I would expect that Haru’s still going to mostly deal with the same general problems given her dad would be in jail albeit still alive. At least in a broad sense, the specifics will very certainly be different), 3, It’d let Akechi get in on the fun of having his “dream” world realized in gaining the phantom thieves as perhaps genuine friends minus at least the baggage of him being the murderer of someone they personally know. He’d still need to atone, and I can’t imagine them letting him off the hook for that, although in the immediate sense absolutely yes they would because Maruki pulling antics (probably more hidden this time I would imagine), and until they fix things at least it’s not like he actually CAN turn himself in because Idealized World is bending over backwards to absolve him which is probably still bullshit in his eyes (He did the crime he’ll do the time damnit!)

And meanwhile Sora is busy dealing with his PTSD basically, while Vanitas crashes on his mind couch and occasionally steers while Sora deals with the mess going on on the inside.

yeah.

Feels good to get that out of the system for the moment.

[norcumii]

For shits and giggles and I honestly couldn’t tell you why, I started listening to the Clone Wars movie commentary, by Filoni and...others?

Putting aside that at least 50% of it is some form of “ALL HAIL GEORGE,” which...yeah. Fine, whatever – there’s been an interesting thread I’m trying to chase down mentally. So, er, late night musings ahead.

They keep talking about how they tossed this line into the editing, or how George is all about tweaking the story in the editing room – and how that’s all about building the final vision. How in order to get a good laugh, in this bit the droid suddenly has the intellectual/philosophical context to ask “Whhhyyyy?” as its being tossed off a cliff to its doom and that was all added several editing rounds in.

And this has been bugging me. Not just because it’s cheap humor and might be good for a startled guffaw but not once one steps back and looks at the picture because ouch, that’s...pretty ugly. Also, this is COMPLETELY ignoring my instincts to snort and be bitchy about George Lucas’ ego and Marcia Lucas saving the OT in the editing room.  

See, my first instinct is to be cautiously approving of this approach. You write a fic, you edit, you edit some more, you get a beta and you tweak depending on their suggestions, and then you post. That’s what these people are talking about, right?

But if that were the case, then why do I spend so much time bitching about how Star Wars NEVER follows through on story lines, and they never spend a fraction of the time we do trying to figure out logistics and political folderol, and – there’s got to be something I’m missing.

I had to step back and look at my usual fonts of inspiration, Aaron Sorkin and Greg Weisman – the latter in particular given how he got tapped for Rebels.

Sorkin is a masterclass pantser. I have no idea what his process is, aside from procrastinating and getting quality scripts in JUUUUST under the wire (or often after that fact). Greg’s more a note-card, organizational type. Not much useful comparing those to what sounds like “George Lucas has An Idea, we try to execute it with our spin, and then Lucas comes in and has more suggestions. If all else fails we pull all-nighters and then wing it for George.”

They’ve mentioned cutting some things, and altering others, so it’s not just a matter of these people just add to things, whereas I know the other two have talked about cutting extraneous stuff a lot. So it’s not something vague about keep cutting the fat.

Something about that notion tweaked a thought, though. The Lucas approach here seems to be taking a storyline, then going in and brushing it up – and the focus seems to be on how to buff up moments. “We have a segment here, how do we give it more punch? Ok, add a joke. How do we buff up the next segment? Apply changes to that thing.” Add in the mantra they keep repeating in the commentary, about how it always has to be new, how for instance if you have a Rancor scene, it can’t just be a rehash or similar to the classic Return of the Jedi rancor scene, it has to have a new twist.

(….OH. And a belated realization that this is one of the things they DIDN’T do for the sequel trilogy, as compared to the prequels! Episode 7 was a rehash, but there wasn’t enough new angles, whereas the prequels were taking the same structure but putting in new scenarios. Maybe? Something for me to chew on later.)

Anyway. What all this does is take a storyline, and focus on those moments.

That DOESN’T look to the greater plot.

Greg approaches a season as a storyline. He has his tiers and tentpost episodes, but it all builds along an arc. Sorkin also has season long plots and themes.

Consequences. The Clone Wars never deals with consequences. They’re so busy punching up a scene they never look to what precedes or follows it, so there’s never any fall out for things other than in a broad, hand-wavy way –

oooooh.

They got so caught up in the theory about this week’s adventure in the Flash Gordon-esque production that they never looked to the overall plot. Like how in soap operas characters would get horrible diseases, need to get organs removed (multiple times) and the like – it’s so tied up in Teh Drama of the moment that there’s never someone going around saying “yeah, uh, this character used to have a kid we might want to remember that.”

So while there’s attempts to show Anakin being disillusioned with the Jedi – see the entire Rako fiasco – there never feels like any actual BUILD there, just moments of “why would you DO that you beTRAYed me Obi-Wan!” without the context we the fans labor so hard to structure. Sure, we can see how Obi-Wan reacts in the few seconds of screentime at the beginning of that arc – hunched over in the Council chamber, with the body language of someone who’s been browbeaten and argued into a fucked up and patently absurd scheme – but we never get more than hints that this is something he never wanted to do.

And then it never gets mentioned again. We can build consequences beyond “and then one day Anakin Falls and becomes Vader!” – I wholeheartedly believe that Rex (one of the most identifiable clones out there) wore Jaig eyes on the Onderon mission entirely as a message to SOMEONE about how he might have to be clandestine, but he’s not about to abandon his identity – but it’s all speculation and personal perspectives.

All the long term consequences are drowned out in the minutia of the moment. Filoni mentioned early on about how the clones check their wounded and call for medics to drive home that these are people, not cannon fodder – while unironically using them as cannon fodder. The only times they’re not used that way is when the deaths are furthering someone’s – usually Rex’s – particular storyline. The bit about a clone calling for a medic is great for a moment, but the followthrough is never pursued unless a different moment might be richer for it and someone on staff happens to remember.

It occurred to me that this is also part of my problems with Avatar the Last Airbender. Look, I’m fascinated by the meta worldbuilding, and some of the themes, but when there’s regular breaks in the dramatic tension by yet another snot joke, I do not have patience for it. I don’t like storytelling that feels the need to step back and jam in humor on the regular every [X] minutes because otherwise executives are worried that the kids will stop caring. And maybe that’s not what’s going on, but if it rubs me that way I’m disinclined to sit through hours and fucking hours of it without an enthusiastic guide.

However, that does explain Lucasfilms’ obsession with Filoni. He seems to thrive on that sort of storybuilding. Take a segment. See how to punch it up. Move on to the next segment.

This, right here, IS one of my problems with Rebels, that was so painful but intermittent through season one. It’s even worse in later seasons – none of which Greg worked on, which. Yeah. Fuck, I am going to have to do that watch through at some point. I mean, throughout Rebels, I could see the worldbuilding and structure, but then it’d get yanked off into left field by this week’s inane gag or absurdist moment or random ass THING they need to cover because oh yeah, they’re trying for an overarching plot and should probably include the thing before it’s immediately relevant.

Back to Clone Wars. I think the problem was too much inspection of segments, and people didn’t often step back and say “where is this storyline going?” Getting too caught up in the moment to check if the scene or gag moved the overall plot and themes along. They got so concerned about doing everything with a fresh new twist they never came back to points, never raised up old elements to say “look how far we’ve come” or “here is how that thing affected people and the plot.”

It’s funny, how something with so much scope can get hamstrung by all the fiddly little details.

[elcorreodetorreon]

“IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle”, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning difficulties), as well as, to a lesser extent, a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects. It is via negativa not via positiva. Designed for learning disabilities, it ends up selecting exam-takers, paper shufflers, obedient IYIs (intellectuals yet idiots), ill adapted for “real life”. The concept is poorly thought out mathematically (a severe flaw in correlation under fat tails, fails to properly deal with dimensionality, treats the mind as an instrument not a complex system), and seemed to be promoted by

racists/eugenists, people bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ test=intelligence; those have been upset with me for suddenly robbing them of a “scientific” tool, as evidenced by the bitter reactions to the initial post on twitter/smear campaigns by such mountebanks as Charles Murray. (Something observed by the great Karl Popper, psychologists have a tendency to pathologize people who bust them by tagging them with some type of disorder, or personality flaw such as “childish” , “narcissist”, “egomaniac”, or something similar).

psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers (military, large corporations) buying the “this is the best measure in psychology” argument when it is not even technically a measure — it explains at best between 13% and 50% of the performance in some tasks (those tasks that are similar to the test itself), minus the data massaging and statistical cherrypicking by psychologists; it doesn’t satisfy the monotonicity and transitivity required to have a measure (at best it is a concave measure). No measure that fails 60–95% of the time should be part of “science” (nor should psychology — owing to its sinister track record — be part of science (rather scientism), but that’s another discussion).

Some argue that IQ measures intellectual capacity — real world results come from, in addition, “wisdom” or patience, or “conscientiousness”, or decision-making or something of the sort. No. It does not even measureintellectual capacity/mental powers.

If you want to detect how someone fares at a task, say loan sharking, tennis playing, or random matrix theory, make him/her do that task; we don’t need theoretical exams for a real world function by probability-challenged psychologists. Traders get it right away: hypothetical P/L from “simulated” paper strategies doesn’t count. Performance=actual. What goes in people’s head or reaction to a screen image doesn’t exist (except via negativa).

Fat Tails If IQ is Gaussian by construction and if real world performance were, net, fat tailed (it is), then either the covariance between IQ and performance doesn’t exist or it is uninformational. It will show a finite number in samplebut doesn’t exist statistically. Another problem: when they say “black people are x standard deviations away”. Different populations have different variances, even different skewness and these comparisons require richer models. These are severe, severe mathematical flaws (a billion papers in psychometrics wouldn’t count if you have such a flaw). See the formal treatment in my next book.

But the “intelligence” in IQ is determined by academic psychologists like the “paper trading” we mentioned above, via statistical constructs s.a. correlation that I show here (see Fig. 1) that they patently don’t understand. It does correlate to negative performance (as it was initially designed to detect learning special needs) but then any measure would work there. A measure that works in left tail not right tail (IQ decorrelates as it goes higher) is problematic. We have gotten similar results since the famous Terman longitudinal study, even with massaged data for later studies. To get the point, consider that if someone has mental needs, there will be 100% correlation between performance and IQ tests. But the performance doesn’t correlate as well at higher levels, though the psychologists will think it does.(The statistical spin, as a marketing argument, is that a person with an IQ of 70 cannot prove theorems, which is obvious for a measure of unintelligence — but they fail to reveal how many IQs of 150 are doing menial jobs).

It is a false comparison to claim that IQ “measures the hardware” rather than the software. It can measures some arbitrarily selected mental abilities (in a testing environment) believed to be useful. However, if you take a Popperian-Hayekian view on intelligence, you would realize that to measure it you would need to know the mental skills needed in a future ecology, which requires predictability of said future ecology. It also requires the skills to make it to the future (hence the need for mental biases for survival).

Real Life: In academia there is no difference between academia and the real world; in the real world there is. 1) When someone asks you a question in the real world, you focus first on “why is he/she asking me that?”, which shifts you to the environment (see Fat Tony vs Dr John in The Black Swan) and detracts you from the problem at hand. Only suckers don’t have that instinct. 2) Real life never never offers crisp questions with crisp answers (most questions don’t have answers; perhaps the worst problem with IQ is that it seem to selects for people who don’t like to say “there is no answer, don’t waste time, find something else”.) 3) It takes a certain type of person to waste intelligent concentration on classroom/academic problems. These are lifeless bureaucrats who can muster sterile motivation. Some people can only focus on problems that are real, not fictional textbook ones (see the note below where I explain that I can only concentrate with real not fictional problems). 4) IQ doesn’t detect convexity (by an argument similar to bias-variance you need to make a lot of small inconsequential mistake in order to avoid a large consequential one. See Antifragile and how any measure of “intelligence” w/o convexity is sterile edge.org/conversation/n…). To do well you must survive, survival requires some mental biases directing to some errors. 5) Fooled by Randomness: seeing shallow patterns in not a virtue — leads to naive interventionism. Some psychologist wrote back to me: “IQ selects for pattern recognition, essential for functioning in modern society”. No. Not seeing patterns except when they are significant is a virtue in real life. 6) To do well in life you need depth and ability to select your own problems and to think independently.

Functionary Quotient: If you renamed IQ , from “Intelligent Quotient” to FQ “Functionary Quotient” or SQ “Salaryperson Quotient”, then some of the stuff will be true. It measures best the ability to be a good slave. “IQ” is good for @davidgraeber’s “BS jobs”.

Metrification: If someone came up w/a numerical“Well Being Quotient” WBQ or “Sleep Quotient”, SQ, trying to mimic temperature or a physical quantity, you’d find it absurd. But put enough academics w/physics envy on it and it will become an official measure.

Notes And Technical Notes

“IQ” is most predictive of performance in military training, with correlation~.5, (which is circular since hiring isn’t random and training is another test).

There are contradictory stories about whether IQ ceases to work past a threshold, since Terman’s longitudinal study of “geniuses”. What these researchers don’t get is these contradictions come from the fact that the variance of the IQ measure increases with IQ. Not a good thing.

The argument that “some races are better at running” hence [some inference about the brain] is stale: mental capacity is much more dimensional and not defined in the same way running 100 m dash is.

I have here no psychological references for backup: simply, the field is bust. So far ~ 50% of the research does notreplicate, and papers that do have weaker effect. Not counting poor transfer to reality (psychological papers are ludic).

How P values often — rather almost always — fraudulent: my paper arxiv.org/pdf/1603.07532…

The Flynn effect should warn us not just that IQ is somewhat environment dependent, but that it is at least partly circular.

Verbalism: Psychologists have a skin-deep statistical education & can’t translate something as trivial as “correlation” or “explained variance” into meaning, esp. under nonlinearities (see paper at the end).

The “best measure” charlatans: IQ is reminiscent of risk charlatans insisting on selling “value at risk”, VaR, and RiskMetrics saying “it’s the best measure”. That “best” measure, being unreliable blew them up many many times. Note the class of suckers for whom a bad measure is better than no measure across domains.

You can’t do statistics without probability.

Much of the stuff about IQ of physicists is suspicious, from self-reporting biases/selection in tests.

If you looked at Northern Europe from Ancient Babylon/Ancient Med/Egypt, you would have written the inhabitants off... Then look at what happened after 1600. Be careful when you discuss populations.

The same people hold that IQ is heritable, that it determines success, that Asians have higher IQs than Caucasians, degrade Africans, then don’t realize that China for about a Century had one order of magnitude lower GDP than the West.

Mathematical Considerations

CURSE OF DIMENSIONALITY A flaw in the attempts to identify “intelligence” genes. You can get monogenic traits, not polygenic (note: additive monogenic used in animal breeding is NOT polygenic).

The Skin in the game issue

How social scientists have trouble translating a statistical construct into its practical meaning.

Psychology

Data Science

Black Swan

Racism

Alt Right

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John Gordon

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I’m surprised no one has mentioned the book, “IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea,” by Stephan Murdoch. I read it recently and recommend it. Even without Taleb’s math prowess excoriating it, IQ’s legitimacy is unconvincing.

Taleb drives a stake through the IQ corpse and helps unveil the shame of 20th

[welllpthisishappening]

Hi, it's writer appreciation day and I just wanted to remind you that you're absolutely fantastic and I live for your writing. I always look forward to your posts and I am so mad that tumblr never gives me notifications when you update because I literally want to read everything you write, including your tags. You're wonderful and I could live in your Blue Line universe, all your Yankee!Killian universes and YPLAG universe, fuck, just all of your universes. I love them all. Seriously. Much love~

HELLO YOU ABSOLUTE DELIGHT AND MY FAVORITE!! So I don’t know if you know this, internet, but Ro and I are genuinely in love. It’s real. It’s true. CAPITAL LETTERS TRUE LOVE. I cannot tell you what Ro’s friendship has meant to me and she is the reason Blue Line got finished and the reason The PyeongChang Triple happened which means she’s THE REASON Matthew David Jones exists and she’s willing to join me down this Tyler Seguin rabbit hole. Look at him! LOOK AT HIS FACE! Anyway, nothing I write would be anything without @distant-rose to let me flail at her and send her snippets that are just walls of text. 

Earlier today we were talking about Matthew Jones (as we are apt to do) and talking about him getting his first tattoo and, like, this was real nice, so, uh, here’s some words Ro.

It hurt like hell.

A fact he was quick to point out – several dozen times, each one getting louder and more yelpier than the last and that was totally a word Lizzie came up with while she was doing a pretty pitiful job of not laughing in Matt’s face. And Peggy was doing enough laughing for all of them.

Combined.

For, like, the entire world combined.

“MD, this was your idea,” she said, another repeat and more laughter and Matt was pretty positive even the tattoo artist was starting to chuckle a bit under his breath.

“That’s why he’s so mad about it,” Lizzie mumbled. “It does something weird to his brain when he’s not right about every single thing in the world. He doesn’t know how to cope.”

Peggy appeared to be cackling.

“Mar, I swear, if you don’t shut up—“

“—You’ll what, MD? Please, tell me what you could possibly do. From Boston, that I’m going to find so intimidating.”

“Don’t you have something else to do?”

She shook her head, smile tugging at the ends of her mouth. “Not a single thing. I legitimately cleared my schedule for this.”

“What does that say about you?”

“Probably a lot of things I don’t want to acknowledge,” Peggy admitted, eyes flitting towards a clearly amused Lizzie. “You’ve got to stop shaking the phone though, Lizzie, it’s making me dizzy and Mom and Dad are going to know something is going on if Iike…I get vertigo or something.”

“You are sitting down, Margaret,” Matt seethed. He hissed in his breath when the needle passed over what appeared to be the single most sensitive piece of skin on his entire body, and both his sister and his cousin rolled their eyes in practiced tandem.

“Should we point out again that this was genuinely your idea, Mattie?” Lizzie asked. “And you researched this.”

“Almost too much,” the tattoo artist mumbled, and Peggy nearly fell off her bed in New York. Matt groaned. That didn’t have anything to do with the needle.

“Mar, seriously, I’m going to tell Mom and Dad about that time you nearly pushed Chris in front of a cab on Astor Place.”

Peggy stopped laughing immediately. Lizzie cursed under her breath. “Shit, Mattie,” she mumbled. “That’s intense.”

“And patently untrue,” Peggy added. “I refuse to agree that. I didn’t try to push him in front of a cab—“

“—Ehhh,” Matt interrupted. “He was pretty bruised and battered.”

“That’s not true either! Also, he was like six and really enjoyed running away from us and we weren’t supposed to be there!”

Matt widened his eyes, like that answered that, but then the needle moved again and it felt like his entire body was on fire and possibly drowning and he’d take being checked eight-thousand times, directly under the shoulder blades, if this ended quicker.

“God, you’re seriously the world’s biggest wimp,” Lizzie sighed. “Also can someone explain to me why you three were sneaking onto Astor Place and letting Chris run in front of cabs?”

Peggy growled, low and threatening and that was almost more intimidating than whatever the hell the needle in his arm was doing because Matt was well acquainted with that sound. It usually ended with her finding a stick and hitting him, no less than, six times in the ankles. On both feet.

“That’s not what happened,” Peggy promised. “MD is a giant liar who is totally overreacting about the pain of a tattoo in a normal tattoo spot that normal people get every day and worrying because he thinks Mom and Dad are going to be upset about this great, big enormous secret.”

“It’s a secret?”

“Again, because MD is an idiot.”

“And sitting right here,” Matt hissed, grumbling a string of words he’d learned during a particularly emotional game during that final Cup run and both Lizzie and Peggy whistled when they realized what he’d said. The tattoo artist looked confused. “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled. “I know I’ve got to sit still.”

The tattoo artist hummed in agreement. Peggy had started laughing again.

“So, someone going to finish this story or should I hang up on you, Peg, and just go directly to the Chris-type source?” Lizzie asked archly.

“Oh my God, no, don’t do that either,” Peggy sighed. “He’ll just agree with MD on principle. The highlights—“

“—Or lowlights, as it were,” Matt interrupted, flashing his sister a smile when she flipped him off.

“Highlights,” she repeated. “It was like two days before Christmas, we kind of, sort of, didn’t get gifts for Mom and Dad, we didn’t want to go near Midtown and, well…it was crowded on Astor Place, Chris might have been hopped up on sugar.” She cut herself off immediately, head snapping towards Matt like she was challenging him to object and his smile felt as wide as it had since the needle had started pricking at his arm. It had to be almost over. “There was a lot of sugar involved,” Peggy continued. “And Chris was excited about Christmas and a tree and running and an almost run in with a cab. It was fine. He was fine. He just kind of—“

“—Fell over,” Matt finished. “In the street. A tourist nearly stepped on him.”

Lizzie looked equal parts stunned and horrified. “That’s the worst Christmas story I’ve ever heard.”

“We never guaranteed it’d be a good Christmas story.”

“What did you end up getting your mom and dad?”

Matt considered that for a moment, gaze flicking towards Peggy and she’d collapsed back on her bed at some point. “We got Dad a t-shirt jersey of his own jersey and Mom got some like…trading card thing of Dad that he signed for Steiner sports approximately twenty-thousand years ago.”

Lizzie laughed, shoulders shaking quickly enough that Matt was almost sure she didn’t realize how tightly he was gripping her right hand. “Wow, you guys suck as kids.”

“Ah, that’s not true,” Matt objected. “Something, something, it’s the thought that counts right?”

“And this is way better than any Christmas or birthday or anniversary gift we could have given them,” Peggy added. “Top-tier Jones Line sentimentality.”

“You’re not the one with a needle jabbing your skin, Mar.”

“And now neither are you,” the tattoo artist said, far too much joy in his voice, like he couldn’t wait for all of them and their very loud FaceTime call to get the hell out of his shop. “Done.”

Matt blinked. “Done?”

“Done.”

And, really, Matt knew his parents wouldn’t freak out about the tattoos. Or tattoo – singular, the first one, probably the first of man, but some of his earliest memories were his mom putting his dad’s wedding ring back on over the ink that wrapped around his left ring finger so he figured he was kind of free to do what he wanted.

But Peggy was right too and it was absurd and kind of sentimental and he hadn’t actually told anyone except Lizzie or Peggy he was thinking about doing it.

They didn’t notice at first.

That made sense too, his arms were covered by his jersey and he was on the ice more often than not and there wasn’t really time to come home during the season, but then it was the offseason and summer in New York refused to allow anything except short-sleeve shirts and it was only a matter of time.

As both Peggy and Chris kept muttering under their breath whenever Matt walked by them in the hallway for the few weeks he was home.

His dad saw it first. Figured.

“What is that?” he asked, sitting at the table in the kitchen with a mug in his hands and a pile of papers next to him that probably detailed the incoming rookies strengths and weaknesses.

Matt nearly tripped over his own feet. “What’s what?”

“Matthew.”

“Ah, you just…jumped right into serious, huh?”

He lifted his eyebrows, mouth set in a thin, straight line and he didn’t actually ever put the mug down. That felt more threatening. “Matthew,” his dad repeated. “What’s on your arm?”

“I feel like you already know the answer to that question.”

“And that’s a pretty God awful answer.”

“I figured you’d be cool about it.”

“I’m not uncool about it. I’m curious.”

Matt sighed, well acquainted with that tone of voice as well and he might have mumbled that’s not fair, hooking his foot around a free chair and sinking onto it with a distinct lack of grace. His dad peered at the ink on his arm, a string of black and he didn’t understand.

“Ok, ok, so I totally was going to tell you,” Matt started, already rushing over the words and there were few things he hated more than whatever his dad’s eyebrows did whenever he was trying to explain some sort of ridiculous situation. “But then I kept thinking about it and it’s honestly the dumbest thing I’ve ever done—“

“—I hate to tell you this, Matt, but it’s kind of tattooed on your body.”

“No, no, I’m not regretting the actual ink. I think that’s kind of cool, right?”

The eyebrows got higher. They defied gravity and the expectations of fatherhood. Matt tried not to slink in his chair.

“It’s kind of cool,” he mumbled. “And you’ve got ‘em, so…”

He trailed off, not sure he could finish that sentence without saying something else he’d regret and he probably wouldn’t if he just told his dad I kind of always want to be you, but neither one of them had actually finished their coffee yet. That felt like something to say while properly caffeinated.

“Anyway,” Matt continued. “I, um, I did a ton of research and talked to the artist about font choices and where to do it and it hurt like hell, but it’s—“

“—They’re coordinates,” his dad said suddenly, and Matt could almost hear the metaphorical light bulb. “Aren’t they?”

He nodded. “Yeah, uh, the longitude and latitude of the Garden.”

It took a moment to find enough room on the table for the coffee mug, and Matt wasn’t entirely prepared to be yanked across the kitchen floor in an actual kitchen chair, but his dad’s arm wrapped around his shoulder and caffeine was probably bad for him during the offseason anyway.

“I like it a lot.”

“Thanks,” Matt muttered.

“It hurt?”

“Like hell. Mar laughed the whole time.”

“Was your sister there?”

“You think Mar snuck to Boston to watch me get tattoos?”

“It honesty wouldn’t surprise me at this point. And there was a plural in there. Are there more than one?”

Matt shook his head, lungs feeling less pinched than they’d been a few minutes before and he grunted when Chris flew into the kitchen, jumping into his stomach and kicking both his legs in the process. “God, C,” he groaned. “Control your limbs.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” his dad laughed. “I think I still have bruises from you.”

“There’s only one tattoo.”

“For now.”

“Eh,” Matt shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe it won’t hurt the second time around.”

“Next time you see Scarlet ask him how loud he yelled when we got the tattoos after the first Cup. I think there’s still video evidence of his inability to cope out there in the world.”

Matt laughed, tugging Chris further up onto the chair and it was only a matter of time before his mom showed up to remind them the chairs can’t hold that much body weight. “Can I get a tattoo, too?” Chris asked, two heads shaking in response and he, somehow, managed to kick Matt again.

“Wait a couple years, C,” Matt grinned, twisting to grab his dad’s coffee mug and grinning when he was met with a decidedly non-English curse. “Then we’ll talk."

[nellie-elizabeth]

Grey's Anatomy: Games People Play (14x14)

April is a hot mess right now. Yikes. Also, this is one of those episodes where there are like thirty different plot threads going on at once, so I'm going to try and be really brief with each element.

Cons:

I'm still not feeling the Maggie/Jackson thing. Sorry, I'm just not. And with the news that April will be leaving the show after Season Fourteen, I'm just generally bummed about the direction this is all going. Why can't April and Jackson just find their way back to each other? Plus now April is going to be hooking up with Dr. Douchebag, and... eh. Just not super interested in that.

Amelia and Owen decide it would be a great idea to have sex. I am less convinced this is a great idea, and I'm also not convinced it's going to be interesting. I've never thought all that much of them as a couple.

Sam and DeLuca. I'm still waiting to care about them, honestly. I think there could be something there, but it's just not clicking with me yet.

Pros:

Meredith and Jo's stuff with the medical study is really interesting. Turns out, the daughter of the person who holds the patent they need is someone Meredith knew when she was a child - one of Ellis' best friends. Meredith spills the beans about her study, and believes she's on the right track... until Richard informs her that this woman and Ellis had a huge falling out, and Meredith now believes she's been played. I like seeing Jo so interested in the study, and I liked the unexpected glimpse into Meredith's childhood. Of course, I'm intrigued to be dipping back in to Ellis' journals for more juicy gossip... this could really go somewhere interesting.

The rugby plot thread was a lot of fun. I liked seeing the young woman stand up to her father, and there was something so tragicomic about a woman losing her ear in the hospital, DeLuca slipping on said ear and getting a concussion, and then the woman's father turns out to be a malpractice attorney... I was laughing right along with Bailey and Richard at the absurdity of the whole scenario. And the stupid young man who threw the ball was absolutely hilarious. Owen really scares the crap out of him, and his panicky reaction is kind of precious.

The awkward game night with Maggie is... well, it's awkward, but in a really funny way. April gets increasingly upset as people don't follow the exact rules in charades and Pictionary, and is annoyed when the other teams guess correctly off of very sparse clues. Then of course Maggie's date's wife shows up at the door, April gets even more drunk and leaves with Dr. Douche (I'll learn his name at some point, I suppose...) and Jackson ends up breaking up with his date and telling Maggie he wants to be with her. That's one crazy social gathering, and it had all of the awkward charm I've come to expect from gatherings at the illustrious Grey residence.

Alex's patient is adorable and I feel so bad for her, but I love the medical marijuana plot thread here, and how Alex is able to talk with his patient's grandmother and make her see that this is the best thing they can do for her. Seeing Alex be so compassionate with his patients just warms my heart, and I loved the moment where Jo stood in the doorway and watched the two of them play checkers together. Simply precious in every way. I really hope they don't kill this girl.

I'm absolutely sure I've missed at least one plot thread... oh yeah! Arizona and Carina are looking in to childbirth mortality rates, when they come across a surprising statistic. Apparently, one particular doctor at the hospital is doing far more C-sections that she should be. Arizona confronts her about it, trying to be polite, but it goes about as well as you might expect. I'm really sad that Arizona will be leaving at the end of this season as well - I wonder if she'll make an exit with Carina by her side? In any case, this plot thread could be quite intriguing. While April took the loss of a patient by going off the deep end, Arizona might be channeling her pain into a more productive avenue. We shall see!

Okay. Is that all of the stories? Damn, this show has a lot of characters to keep track of. This was a good episode for sure. Standard, nothing too noteworthy, but entertaining as always.

8.5/10

[sgrubsauce]

My Thoughts on the New “Canon” Aspect Quiz (+ moons!)

Well, this can’t wait.

I've taken the quiz, read the canon aspect descriptions and the descriptions of what the aspects of the Hiveswap characters are, as well as the descriptions of the moons. Thoughts below the cut:

(TL;DR:  Contains some useful tidbits, but excessively facile and generally underwhelming and inadequate--but also not canon, so we can just ignore it as suits our needs)

ON THE ASPECTS:

The biggest thing about the aspects is that most of them have approximately one line of any value, and the rest is zodiac-like in that it’s basically rainbow reading--that is to say, every single aspect has such a wide list of personalities and traits listed that they will apply to everyone.  There is, however, usually a key description of the aspect in the middle--stuff like confirming Rage as a denier of lies and a bringer of harsh truths.  It also confirms the concept of aspects as opposites matching the standard pattern, and I would like to take this opportunity to politely tell everyone against this theory to suck it.

In terms of the actual aspects, the one thing we got (and it’s a big thing!) is an actual reasonable description of what Doom means and how it forms a dichotomy with life.  It’s all terribly vague and buried in wishy-washy nonsense, but the gist of it seems to be that Doom players suffer and need to learn to empathize, while Life players empathize and need to learn to suffer.  I’m not sure this exactly fits Sollux’s arc, and less sure that it fits Mituna’s (although Heirs don’t start with their aspect so it kinda works), but it’s more than possible that I’m misreading this.  My biggest takeaway from this is twofold:

Firstly, that most if not all Doom players are on the Wounded Angel arc in Chuubo’s.

Secondly, that the Buddha is the archetypal Life player.

I’m really not sure how to feel about those things.

Unfortunately, most of the other aspects are a wash.  Describing Time as goal-oriented is fair, if not the first thing I would say, and the description of Hope vs. Rage seems a little over-simplified but good enough for people with no prior background, but then they go and describe Light as knowledge.  While this may seem correct at first blush, I’ve previously ranted about how all evidence in the story points towards Light as meaning stories instead.  I can accept that Hussie wanted Light to mean knowledge, but his own work contradicts him here.  The fact that they posted this makes me doubt the value of the other posts.

ON THE MOONS:

The lunar aspects share a lot of traits with the aspects, in that the descriptions are so broadly applicable as to basically be meaningless.  Once again, there is a single line of valuable information to be gleaned from this, and that is the perceived decider between Prospit and Derse dreamers--Prospit dreamers accept authority, while Derse dreamers rebel against it.  Like the aspects, this makes sense on first blush.  However, there are some issues.  You could easily say that Vriska and Tavros both respect authority, but to say Equius rejects it (as he should, as a Derse dreamer) is patently absurd.  That might not be the best example, as Void players are free from stories about them and can make their own path, so they might not be as affected by their lunar alignment--but what about the other Dersite trolls?  Nepeta shows no signs of wanting to fight the establishment or rebel in any particular way, Eridan wants to strengthen the status quo, and Feferi’s arc is in many ways about her having to learn to rebel because following the status quo is her first instinct!  In short, this theory’s falling apart in a number of ways, and the nail in the coffin is that any theory that fails to explain why Sollux and Mituna, and only Sollux and Mituna, are residents of both moons falls apart--and this one doesn’t even try.

ON XEFROS BEING A RAGE PLAYER:

According to the signs shown, Xefros is destined to be a Rage player.  A lot of people seem to view this as unexpected, but in truth he could be viewed as a Page or Knight of Rage rather easily.  He’s been led by Dammek to believe that Rage is constant anger against “the man”, when in reality it’s tearing about any lies, even comforting ones like the rebellious structure Dammek’s set up.  I don’t really have much to say about this, given how little we really know about Xefros; a lot of his characterization really hinges on how plausible the revolution is.

ON THE QUIZ ITSELF:

It has 8 questions for the moons and 12 for the aspects.  Each of the moon questions has 5 answers on a linear scale between the moons, and each of the aspect questions is a linear scale between the two extremes of two opposite aspects.  If there are ties, it resolves them in a fixed way rather than considering influence of other questions.  In addition, some of the questions are based solely on surface-level traits of an aspect instead of the actual personality traits (”would you rather travel through time or through space”--really?  I expected this from an amateurish fan, not from you).  It has set before itself a monstrous undertaking, and then proceeded by falling flat on its face.  If you were to design a classpect quiz (for I firmly believe that different classes have such different relations to their aspect that it would be impossible to properly determine one without the other), it would need to start with wide-ranging questions, then narrow down between similar ties as you went; it should ideally adjust itself on the fly to tease out nuances; and it would need to perform meta-analysis of the answers to notice overall trends in behavior.  Even then, it might not always be correct.  I may have been somewhat considering making such a quiz for myself with all of those features, but I lack the background in psychology which would be necessary to properly write the questions.  So, to see this quiz which barely even tries, from WhatPumpkin and Hussie himself, borders on insulting.

“BUT WAIT!  SURELY IF THIS CONTRADICTS YOUR THEORIES, THAT MEANS YOUR THEORIES ARE WRONG?”

I’m glad you asked such a leading question, imaginary Karkat!  As it turns out, the author does not have sole ownership of the work, and their interpretation is not inherently more correct than anyone else’s.  This is a principle known as death of the author, and while it may be considered something of a stretch, I firmly believe such a principle applies here, as the quiz is non-canonical.  This may seem absurd at first blush, but there is a clear reason why:

These two trolls are the canon fantrolls, Mierfa Durgas and Nektan Whelan.  They are the results of a pair of $10,000 donations to Hussie’s Kickstarter, which offered to make a fantroll canon.  As such, any excuses you might make--for instance, that Caliope was imagining the signs as hypotheticals--cannot be used; these two characters are definitionally canon.  However, their signs are not included in the expanded zodiac; and as such, because it contradicts known canon information, it therefore is not canon and cannot be treated as such.  It can tell us a lot about what Hussie thinks the aspects mean, but not a word of proof as to their actual meaning.

[wirewitchviolet]

Isolation

You don’t want to read this post, it’s just me wallowing in self-pity.

I’m not presently suicidal. If I were suicidal, I’d be ineligible for a lot of trans related things, and more importantly, I just left the house for the weekend, so my cat is being extra clingy and reminding me how much it would be upset if I ever left and didn’t come back.

I have, however, completely given up any hope of ever being happy, or feeling safe, or having a job, or someone I can trust, or not bringing pain and misery to the people I do care about.

Looking back over the archives of this blog, I see a post from a year and a half ago which oddly enough, I also titled Isolation. Reading back over that, it’s pretty informative about what I’m dealing with tonight, and I’m at a point where I can fill some of those blanks in from that.

There is some guy named Gabe who leads some little clique (sometimes referred to as “the tankies” or “the anime communists”) whose collective hobby is making up ridiculous rumors about trans people, spreading them to people with a weird willingness to tear down “fake progressives,” and continuing to stalk and harass targets for years afterward and targeting anyone else who comes to their defense. Recently someone wrote a nice article explaining that whole mess, and I think, lately, they’re enough of a known quantity it minimizes the harm they can do.

At the time they targeted me, this little group was untouchable. When people talked about them at all, it was always in guarded whispers and vague references with the implication that powerful people defended them, and I was personally urged never to speak about them by Zoe Quinn. At the time that had me particularly horrified about how powerful they apparently were because Zoe wouldn’t say that about any other hate group, and my personal opinion of Zoe was entirely too high for the thought to ever cross my mind that Zoe might be one of the “powerful people” defending them.

I absolutely panicked at the time, partly because the attack itself was quite effective, with hundreds if not thousands of people in my professional and hobby circles hearing some vague third hand account that I was bad news and should be blocked, which is how it always goes with this group. The actual accusations are patently ridiculous in context- someone gets painted as a violent anti-feminist for muttering about TERFs, or islamophobic for saying Trump’s nazi ties concern them more than hypothetical hawkishness from other candidates. In my case, it was some ridiculous story where I’m a racist cop from Brazil using coded phrases to attack some random woman I’d never heard of. Those full versions though get truncated down when they start spreading. “She’s anti-feminist.” “She’s islamophobic.” “She’s racist.” And the rumors are spread amongst people with no close connection to the target, generally.

What mainly concerned me at the time though was Zoe Quinn’s reaction when I found myself getting blackballed left and right and asked for advice. Lots of “I have friends on both sides of this,” and “I don’t want to get involved.” In hindsight, the obvious meaning here is “I don’t want to alienate my troll friends by defending you against their obviously baseless slander” which is pretty inexcusable from the public face of an organization whose mission statement was helping people deal with exactly that sort of attack. From my viewpoint at the time though, it was so much worse. My impression was that there was some version of the absurd rumor floating around about me having it out for some random woman and spearheading attacks on her was so convincing that my most trusted friend and confidant at the time not only believed it, but was too scared of me lashing out to even discuss it.

That lead to me attempting suicide on multiple occasions, particularly as Zoe encouraged more mutual friends not to talk to me, shut me out of my only support network at the time, and made it overtly clear I wasn't entitled to so much as a sympathetic ear when I was later targeted by Jesse Singal and Randi Harper when they came out as deeply transphobic.

I didn't even start to piece together the more mundane version of things until early this year, when my routine private conversations with other people driven to the brink of suicide by mass harassment campaigns showed me how many other people I know were terrified that Zoe had completely cut them off on asking for help dealing with attacks from the same nasty little clique, all of whom had also been downright worshipful of Zoe to the point where Zoe not believing them made them feel like nobody would.

I've finally mostly come to terms with all that. Someone I thought was a really good friend I could always trust wasn't. OK. And a ton of people I've never even talked to think I'm some kind of monster because some creeps spread ridiculous rumors, and people always forget the specifics when they here someone's a bad person but that they heard it tends to stick, so no matter how much those people get exposed discredited it won't matter for their victims. OK. People always say though that these sorts of things help you work out who your real friends are though, because they stick with you. But that isn't true.

Recently I wrote something touching on some of this. I really didn't want to. I was fine with working out who else got hurt the way I did and helping them cope quietly, and not publicly expose any ugliness. But then Zoe went and publicly posted something about hanging out with her super great friend Randi Harper, and a couple dozen people suddenly see the person who gaslit them into suicide attempts by pretending mass harassment campaigns weren't happening and disappearing from their lives, publicly endorsing someone who actively attacked them and took out a damn hit from reddit nazis, so people started saying things about it, and getting discredited, and getting attacked. And since these are all severely marginalized people whose lives were destroyed by all of this, and nobody believes them, I stood up and laid the cards out on some of what I've been carrying around for the last two years. And more people I didn't realize had been hurt like this came out of the woodwork to thank me for letting them know they weren't the only ones suffering like this, so I think that was the right call, but obviously a ton of other people didn't want to learn about this and walked out of my life.

And so did people who already knew all this. In that earlier blog post from a year and a half ago, I mentioned a point when "I was considering suicide, and only two people in the entire world bothered to say anything." One of those two people is someone I was extremely close to. We'd talk about serious dark stuff in their life, we've both talked each other off ledges, they personally witnessed a lot of what left me such a mess, and they were the only person to even attempt to pick up some of the pieces and clear the air about ridicious rumors about me. Less than an hour after I posted that storify, they severed all ties with me, blocking me in everything we'd ever used to talk, all without a single word. Other people who'd heard what I'd been through at the time, just without the names, and offered support, turned on me viciously once they had names. A friend without any onnection to anyone else involved just bowed out of my life because I suddenly didn't seem like someone to be associating with.

Then a professional bigot highlighted the whole thing and spun it as some new ridiculous attack, and more people let me know they hated me, and when I finally thought it was over, I went somewhere public, and ran into people I hadn't talked to, who made it clear they don't like me, and I came home to more sudden wordless blocks, and comments about not being welcome places. It never stops and any time I try to speak up it only ever gets worse. Nobody believes me, even when I can prove I'm telling the truth. It's better for everyone to denounce me than risk hurting the reputation of people who have wronged me I guess, and even at the best of times I don't know if I've ever even really had a fairweather friend. There's people who say consoling things when I'm losing it, but I can count on one hand how many times anyone has ever just spontaneously asked me to come see a movie, or paid me a visit, or introduced to their other friends, or just checked up on me since it had been a while.

And when there is someone who seems to kind of like me, I can't ever trust it, because people I thought were the best friends I'd ever had have stabbed me in the back without a second thought, and my own parents don't even like me. All I really have is this cat who's sitting on my lap licking tears off me, and I don't think there's anything I can do that will ever change that.

[its-just-like-the-movies]

Date Night!: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Back when the swell fella who would become my boyfriend and I were in one of those strange middle grounds where we were on our way to becoming a couple and very, very aware of it, our first sort-of-date was when Tommy invited me to go see Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice on its opening night. I, of course, accepted, somewhat reluctantly. I can’t remember if I was expecting the film to be good or bad, though I’m sure before then some of its abysmal reviews had been public. I was also nervous about the whole “oh my god this is probably sort of a date isn’t it”, especially since at the time I didn’t know him all that well. This would be the first of many dates at Ze Cinemah, although after this we’d be perfectly, happily aware that they were all dates. Even better, I think, is our immediate discussions after the film is over, and how eager we are to talk about it and discuss what we’ve just seen. We’ve seen plenty of films together, and maybe I’ll talk about other ones we’ve seen someday, but I can already feel a pit in my stomach drop at having to talk about this stinking pile of steamingness. All said, Batman v Superman is one of those truly atrocious films, like The Judge or The Danish Girl, that works like so much manure and makes me start sparking and frothing with how horrible they were. It’s an energizer more than it is a depressive, though it for sure is both, and there is one thing about our date in particular that haunts me every day. It’s not even something the film did, but something I did, or almost did, but could have done more of. Something that perhaps could have changed the screening for the whole theater, or as Anthony Hopkins keeps saying in the trailers for the new Transformers movies “change the tide of human history itself”. I wonder about it every day and every night, as I sleep and as I wake, and especially as a type this story to you, The Void, and now I must share the tale of my screening of Batman vs Superman with you to get it of my chest, to free myself, and to see where the tides of human history itself shall take me. Also: I’m going to be very mean to this film, and am very not interested in hearing about how wrong I am from random eggs as I and many others I know have been on Twitter. I hate it, don’t care if you love it, for fuck’s sake leave me alone.

It didn’t take the two of us long to find a pair of seats, though we immediately moved to the row behind us because our view was partially blocked by the structure of the stairwell. We warned the couple who ended up taking those seats about it, though I can’t remember if they moved too. And the film starts. Zack Snyder has the gall to open the film by reminding us that Batman’s parents died in front of him during a robbery gone wrong. He also seemingly cannot hire Jeffrey Dean Morgan to do much beyond die in the openings of his films, though I remember he had more to do in Watchmen. The visual of Martha’s(!!!) pearl necklace snapping in the gun’s safety as the trigger is pulled is sort of fascinating but also pretty grotesque, all things considered. Batffleck is saying something, though I cannot remember what. We see the funeral, little Bruce running into the woods in sadness during the procession, only to fall into a well or pit or some such hole in the ground. The score, I’m sure, was going crazy.

And then, it happens. Baby Bruce is levitated out the pit by seemingly hundreds of bats flying around him like a tornado, floating him towards the light. This is how we are abruptly told that this is a dream sequence, and reader, I laughed. Not the cackle it deserved, but I couldn’t stop it from escaping completely. I chuckled, giggled, whatever; I’m pretty sure Tommy hit me on the arm to calm me down and get me stop but I’m not quite sure. The giggle is what counts, though, and it haunts me. What if I had just burst out laughing at a moment that the whole theater was palpably flummoxed by? Batffleck wakes up but I am still reeling from the horseshit prologue we have been subjected to. It is not the most nonsensical thing we are going to see in this movie. It is not even the least plot-relevant indulgence that Zack Snyder will take us through, nor the least inexplicable jump of energy or plot logic that we’ll be forced to sit through. Academy Award winner Holly Hunter will be forced to stare dramatically, in close-up, to a jar of piss before she and dozens of other people are killed in an assassination plot meant to frame Superman, whose own close up registers at the subtle, bottomless despair and discomfort of sitting on the can and realizing you’re not quite done shitting, except Henry Cavill also registers as remarkably bored. Jeremy Irons reads every line as Alfred Pennyworth with such bitchy, subtly nasty inflections that I actually found the character an unwelcome presence, though if anyone found this a life raft of something enjoyable happening on screen, particularly Irons, then by all means savor him. Amy Adams will throw a Kryptonite spear into an underwater pile of rubble and, with no indication that Lois Lane has been told why the heroes need it to vanquish the rock monster that is Doomsday, dives into the water and nearly drowns recovering it. Batman slaughters - in fact, he often guns down - dozens of criminals on screen, brands sex offenders, had one montage that’s just him training to become even beefier and another, completely bizarre dream sequence that may also be a warning from another dimension’s Flash where Superman is technically Hitler, and Barry Allen screams about Lois Lane before Batffleck wakes up at his desk, which is meant to convey that this May Have Been A Dream Or Is It Ooooooh. This scene has no narrative impact and is never referenced again, though it is not as patently stupid as is the sight of Superman, wielding that Kryptonite spear, deciding to kamikaze himself by killing Doomsday with the knowledge that he cannot survive any assault the giant may bring on him while he is in such close proximity to said spear, ignoring the two superheroes who have been helping him fight Doomsday this whole time.

There are plenty of other absurd, delicious, amazingly shitty one-offs. Michael Shannon is credited for appearing in the film for the three seconds General Zod’s corpse floats in the remains of his spaceship. The President of the United States decides to nuke Superman in the middle of his fight with Doomsday after the latter threw the Man of Steel into the Earth’s orbit (a safe enough distance to nuke him, I suppose). Diane Lane is duck taped and tied to a chair, threatened to be burned alive as Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor throws photos of her with “Witch” written on her face, and all of this is tied into some mythological asinine crap that is Luthor’s motivation for wanting to kill Superman and create Doomsday in the first place. Eisenberg spends the whole film as some combination of Edward Nygma and a meth addict’s impersonation of Heath Ledger’s Joker, and it is by far the biggest trainwreck in the whole film. I think I also resisted laughing once “MARTHA!!???!?!?!?!!!” happened but in truth, I blocked that out of my memory. The sheer joy of seeing Wonder Woman, and hearing the score come alive as she roars into battle, literally, at some points, is all that is keeping me from giving this film an F grade, though perhaps I just can’t rate an Amy Adams film that low. Gal Gadot is at least enjoying herself, which is in even bigger contrast to the stark constipation that Cavill and Ben Affleck are constantly exuding. The film has ideas about literal hero worship, about what Superman could mean or stand for, and wants to have real conversations about his necessity, but it jerry-rigs them through Christic imagery and working hard to undermine the criticisms of genuine challengers and the critics themselves. Bruce’s hatred and suspicion of the Man of Steel seems completely arbitrary, banking on the fear of Superman turning on humanity in spite of his big coming-out party as a global entity being the eradication of his home species for the sake of mankind. Horrific as the collateral damage was, it’s not in line with anything Superman does in the film, is shown as doing, or is framed as doing by Synder himself, who doesn’t pretend for a moment that there’s actually anything wrong with Superman. He’s content to make the man a misunderstood martyr, a golden boy whose death inspires the formation of The Justice League and the warming up of Batman’s glacial, inherently distrusting heart. Superman is basically fridged on behalf of Bruce Wayne, and it’s clumsily executed as Smallville himself is. 

There are so many vile, absurd, abstracted, unnecessary, horrific moments in this film and yet, I still wonder how much that night would’ve changed had I actually burst out laughing at the beginning of the film. What would’ve changed for the whole theater if some jackass sitting hear the back-left had cackled as a small child is literally lifted out of a scene the filmgoing public had seen at least seventy-eight million times by now, one that kicks off an indefensibly ghastly excuse for a Hollywood spectacle lit worse than even the lowest budge episode of The X-Files and colored like it’s scared that bright shades will deflate how Dour and Serious this Cinematic Experience is? Recounting many of the set pieces I’ve already mentioned back to my sister afterwards I couldn’t help cackling at some of them, though I did so far more angrily with Tommy immediately after, baffled not just that I had paid for this film but that it even existed, that anybody who made this gigantic dumpster fire thought that it was in any way a competently crafted, psychologically or emotionally coherent picture. Could we, as a crowd, as a community, have laughed at this horseshit for what it was? I love that in horror movies the audience always make the pact with itself that fine, this is a lot, you deserve a good scream. This picture was even more upsetting, and perhaps if I’d laughed, having taken the piss out of it so goddamn early, we wouldn’t have had to just sit there and take it. We could’ve fought back and laughed at it (with it?), openly railed against it, or just fucking not be quiet throughout this whole ordeal. I will always be haunted by this inaction on my part, and to this day it shames me.

He did try to defend parts of it, but not much, and for sure stole my comments about how Eisenberg wasn’t even playing Lex Luthor when we starting talking about the film to our RA Josh and fellow hallmate Dylan in the hall that same night. Josh peddled the theory that Marvel people had paid off critics to hate on DC’s live-action features, which I challenged by asking why Marvel would even need to do that. It’s not even that DC’s films are so drastically worse than any of Marvel’s features, but Marvel at least has a brand formula at work. Their knock is never that their bad, just predictable and uninspired, though they’ve been getting a little better at going against both those counts lately, with the Guardians films at least. And I will say this for Batman v Superman: It’s awfulness has staked a far larger claim on my mental landscape than The Avengers or Deadpool or most Marvel fare ever has. I liked Man of Steel fine, was particularly impressed by the early minimalism in portraying Superman’s powers, especially his x-ray vision, and was even playing devil’s advocate with family members I saw it with. I’m semi-interested to return to it, but not passionately so. You for sure couldn’t call this film formulaic, perhaps unworthy of all the bombast it’s applying to itself but worthy of notice the way a burning car is, or how Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern are seemingly in awe of that giant pile of shit in Jurassic Park. As dubious as literally every aspect of this film is, the sheer magnitude of its awfulness is compelling in such a way that I became anticipatory of the film’s eventual Rifftrax takedown as I was watching it. I don’t know how soon into it this idea started, but once Amy Adams dived in to get that spear I could already hear the befuddled joke about Lois Lane: Plot Psychic that Kevin Murphy would probably hurl at the screen, and it made this mess a little bit better.

All things being honest, I am absolutely going to see Justice League with my boyfriend, though I wonder how much more excited he is than I am. I loathed Suicide Squad but thought it was so poorly edited I stopped caring and would up having something of an okay time, appreciating Margot Robbie trying to find a character in Harley Quinn and relishing that Viola Davis actively seemed to want to be there a little as I did. Of course I’ve seen Wonder Woman, a step above most recent DC efforts in that it’s compelling, competently told and emotionally resonant, though it really shows Gadot isn’t much of an actress. There’s a lot about it I questioned in the moment but I am so, so appreciative of Wonder Woman as a film that exists, and one I mostly enjoyed seeing even as I actively wished for a better version of the film while I was watching it. Maybe I should just not see these given how much I end up railing against these projects, but I love watching movies with my guy (who I also love) and they are great conversation fodder. Plus, we watch lots of better movies together! Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was the first of many, many delightful date night movies, and we weren’t even dating yet! My guy was easily the best part of the film, though it’d be a discredit to it say that it wasn’t a memorable experience, future boyfriend or no. I truly hope I never see it again, at least not sober, but I got a great story out of it, and a great man too, which is more than a lot of movies have ever given me. And at the end of the day, it’s that the biggest reward a person could get? It’s not like this makes Batman v Superman anything more than a gray, ugly, violent, gross, despicable, unpleasant, misogynistic, time-wasting, utterly horrendous, steaming pile of shit. But hey, it counts for something.

[saberessinfronteras]

Einstein was an Artist: How Creativity Actually Works

Einstein inspired a paradigm shift in physics not as a scientist but as an artist. Our entire construct of the world depends on language. What we see isn’t what the universe has defined, but what our brains have learned to label. English distinguishes a scientist as someone who systematically learns about a part of the natural world and uses that knowledge to describe and predict it. An artist, on the other hand, is defined as someone who creatively produces. These labels are important. They’re not perfect, but they allow us to differentiate between the different aspects of our reality. The harm occurs when we use them incorrectly. When it comes to categories like science and art, we have a tendency to presume mutual exclusivity. Einstein may have been a practicing scientist with a focus on theoretical physics, but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t also an artist. In fact, we can easily argue that more of his success was attributed to his creativity than it was to his underlying knowledge of the field. There are many smart and knowledgeable scientists. Rarely, however, are they capable of producing work that shifts our entire understanding of the world. That requires an entirely new way of looking at things. You don’t have to play the violin or write a poem to be an artist. It’s simply about producing, and the quality of what you produce is largely dependent on creativity. Believe it or not, there isn’t as much to it as you might think. 1. Don’t Wait for Inspiration to Get Moving There are many misconceptions about how breakthroughs are made. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that they’re suddenly inspired — like the often told story of the moment the fall of an apple led Newton to discover gravity. In a slight way, they do happen, and sometimes, sporadically. That said, if your sole tactic is to sit and wait for inspiration to strike, then you’re almost always setting yourself up for failure. Dr. Mark Beeman leads the Creative Brain Lab at Northwestern University. He uses brain scanners to conduct research studies to understand the creative process. In his own words: “Although the experience of insight is sudden and can seem disconnected from the immediately preceding thought, these studies show that insight is the culmination of a series of brain states and processes operating at different time scales.” Simply put, eureka moments occur because of the work leading up to them. Action stimulates inspiration more often than inspiration stimulates action. 2. Treat It Like an Unsexy Job Doing creative work isn’t sexy. It’s about setting a schedule and just doing it. In 1902, Einstein got a job at a Swiss patent office. He had searched for a teaching position in the preceding years with little luck. This forced him into an inopportune and uninspiring place relative to his interest in physics. During his time there, however, he chose to manage his day so that he had a disciplined balance between the hours he spent on the job and the hours he dedicated to scientific work. He was deliberate in his commitment to creation, and the fruits of his labor led to the Annus Mirabilis papers. Scientists call it the miracle year. It would inspire the formulation of the two fundamental theories in physics: the theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics. Had Einstein waited for the right moment, the world might not be where it is. The best way to create is to treat it as a job. Pick a time, show up, and produce. 3. Seek Relationships Between Existing Ideas At its core, creativity is just a new and useful way of combining old ideas. It isn’t imagined out of thin air, and it isn’t completely abstract. It’s a fresh way of making sense of the existing components of reality that have yet to merge. In 1945, Einstein wrote a letter in response to a survey by a French mathematician who was trying to understand the thinking patterns of famous scientists. It can be found in Ideas and Opinions, a collection Einstein’s writings, and in it, he speaks about his process. “The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought.The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be ‘voluntarily’ reproduced and combined. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above-mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory playseems to be the essential feature in productive thought — before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others.” If you think about creativity as the ability to develop meaningful connections between existing parts of your reality, you can start to realize that creativity isn’t just reserved for the likes of Mozart and Picasso. It’s something that impacts all of our lives, and it’s something we all practice. Hone your mental inventory of knowledge and let it mingle in absurd ways. 4. Be Willing to Produce Subpar Work Like anything else in life, the only way to master creativity is to put in work. The difficulty, however, lies accepting the production of subpar work. Nobody likes to fall short of expectations, but it’s all the more daunting when it comes to creating because the result is a tangible output, like a painting or a book. One way to challenge this difficulty is to realize that we’re not the only ones that produce bad work. When we see a great creation by a genius, it’s useful to remember that they worked on more than just one piece. They produced a lot of really unsexy work that no one talks about. Over the course of his career, Einstein published over 300 scientific papers and about 150 non-scientific papers. An archive of his non-published work contained more than 30,000 unique documents, and he wasn’t always right. In Brilliant Blunder, Mario Livio predicts that about 20% of Einstein’s papers contain mistakes of sorts. A byproduct of his effort to think in unconventional ways was that his work was sometimes imperfect. 5. Compromise Today for Tomorrow Extraordinary results require extraordinary commitment. That’s the secret. John Hayes is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and he once did a study to analyze thousands of musical pieces between 1685 and 1900. He was curious about how long it took for a musician to produce world class art. He narrowed it down to 500 masterpieces by 76 composers. By mapping out a timeline for each individual, he looked at when a piece was produced. Outside of only three artists, every composition was written at least a decade after they started to take their work seriously. In follow-up studies of poets and painters, he found the same result. He termed this “The ten years of silence” — a period with a high production of work but very little recognition. To cultivate creativity, you have to not only build the courage to produce bad work, but you also have put in a lot of unrewarded time to create great work. All You Need to Know If an artist is someone who produces something new and novel, then few people in history fit the bill like Einstein. Artistry was the source of his genius. This is what his story can teach us: I. Don’t wait for inspiration to get moving. Creativity is a process. Even the seemingly sporadic insights — like the ones we get in the shower — rely on what came before them. Inspiration doesn’t just strike for no reason. It relies on a consistent pattern of work that sometimes manifests itself in the form of those rare moments. To truly practice creativity, commit to a schedule, show up, and get to work, whether you want to or not. II. Seek relationships between existing ideas. Nothing new is completely original. Creativity is simply about producing something using a combination of the existing elements of your reality. Start by developing a mental inventory of relevant knowledge, work to connect the dots, and then support those connections with a logical structure. III. Produce a large volume of work. Creativity doesn’t work unless you do.Produce in the face of failure, and produce in the face of subpar results. It’s easy to forget that not every piece of work created by a genius was all that great. A lot of it wasn’t. It’s just not talked about. Creating bad work is necessary in order to uncover great work, and it all takes time. Mastering creativity is in itself an art, and like any art, it can empower you. The internet is noisy I write at Design Luck. It’s a free high-quality newsletter with unique insights that will help you live a good life. It’s well-researched and easy-going. Join 20,000+ readers for exclusive access. CreativityLifeLife LessonsSelf ImprovementEntrepreneurship One clap, two clap, three clap, forty? By clapping more or less, you can signal to us which stories really stand out.   Follow  Zat Rana Medium member since May 2017 Playing at the intersection of science, art, and business. I write to reduce noise. www.designluck.com. CNBC, Business Insider, World Economic Forum, etc. Follow  Personal Growth Keep Learning. Keep Growing. 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