#but it's kind of actually justified in both cases because these people simply don't know anyone else

[nontrivialproof]

Watching Severance... Helly and Mark are like Chidi and Eleanor levels of no chemistry to me.

[orionhelluvaranting]

Like creator, like character

Isn't that interesting how every bloody time someone tries to call Stolass' out this frigging owl finds a way to justify himself or shift the blame?

"I would feel bad if I hurt you but we both know I didn't do that!"

"Cheating implies there was a betrayal..."

"I don't look down on you!"

"I didn't leave you, I would never, that wasn't my choice!"

And do you know who does the exact same thing?

Vivziepop by herself! 🌟

"You disapprove me for sexualizing the rapist and preferring to sell merch with him rather than with his victim? C'mon, guys, Val isn't real! He's Karen from 'Mean Girls'! Fiction is an escape!.. You're just pissy your faves didn't get merch!"

"I liked the post calling my haters 'subhumans'? Well, people are just 'exhausted of being attacked for liking a show'. My fans harass critics? It sucks, but my fans are 'scared to talk about liking the show due to the harassment'. So you're no any better!"

"You've found a plothole XYZ, inconsistency in the story, lame jokes or any other flaws of my shows? No, my writing is smart and logical, bc I said so! Learn to read between the lines!"

"You think I have favoritism toward certain characters? No way! Stolass and Blitz are BOTH in the wrong, I'm gonna show this! Millie isn't ignored by the narrative, actually I'm so excited for you to know about her more! Loona doesn't speak a half of the season because... it was easier on the budget. HB has steered more towards a male-led stories. It's intended this way. You're just misunderstand my genius thought process."

"That's not my problem", "I care about SA victims," "Grow up!" etc.

And I'm not even talking about the justifying/problematic tweets she simply liked ����

This woman always has an excuse. For everything. Just like Stolass does. Honestly I'd rather not speculate about Stolass being Viv's self-insert (as other critics said long before) but that kind of behavior only confirms such statements. It's like they both live by this quote:

Say whatever you want but for me this is the main proof that Stolass will NEVER take responsibility for his own actions. Because it's seems like Vivienne has no clue how to do this either. She doesn't think she could ever be wrong. So she uses the same mentality for Stolass since he's her beloved pet.

And which one of Viv's excuses is your personal favorite? Mine is "We didn't ask anyone to redesign these characters, it's a choice". Sounds like "They should've seen that coming! It's their own fault they're harassed! What did they even expect?" for me. Just fucking brilliant! 😤💢

PS/ I haven't been monitoring Vivziepop closely enough all the time and maybe I don't see the whole picture, so please correct me if I'm wrong here but... I can't remember a single time this woman admitted her wrongness or apologized sincerely. Ever. I mean, if there's at least one case of Viv making amends or smth it would be nice, even if it prolly won't fix everything.

[decepti-thots]

☕ ~ trans woman whirl?

I love trans Whirl headcanons but I think I love them for totally different reasons than I usually see, tbh? That is- I think a lot of the time the fandom just goes 'oh! Girl Holoform Spotted! now this character is girl, and we can say character is trans girl because in the comic they are called he/him' and tbh I find that attitude as fandom often implements it annoying for a couple reasons; one, it often feels like a kind of 'if character Looks Like Girl, well, character Is Girl' deal which tbh feels kinda shallow to me ngl, and two, it (and similar under-expanded upon headcanons) not infrequently seems to be a way for the fandom as a whole to justify the general lack of content for the very explicitly canon trans characters by instead being like 'all the material we make for these characters not treated as such in canon proves that we definitely love trans characters. don't think about how lug or anode or arcee don't get that same attention, or that this content only offhandedly actually deals with transness 90% of the time', you know? Bit mean, but I can't help but feel that's a repeated tendency in the fandom, tbh. I would feel less like this if the fanon trans headcanons did not just vaguely go 'oh. also ig they are trans, how nice' with no follow up and instead actually treated these characters as having opinions about being trans, but in too many cases they unfortunately... don't. (And no, them being robots is not an excuse. Anode has opinions on this. Arcee has opinions on this, a lot of them!) But we're here to talk about Whirl, and I want to talk about why I do love trans Whirl, so.

I love trans Whirl for reasons far outside of that, and I think taking that approach to the idea does it a disservice tbqh. Specifically I like trans Whirl for the same reason I like reading Verity as trans, because it adds to Whirl's character arc about being denied agency over identity and clawing it back on purpose in a way where the trans reading feels especially resonant and like it genuinely adds to the overall subtext of her arc. Whirl's entire character is one where the violent removal of agency in her life is so much a focus it changes the course of history; Whirl refusing to let the functionists that ruined her life win is why Elegant Chaos plays out as it does. Whirl is a character whose entire sense of self as a person with the ability to make any choices at all was viciously ripped away from her, and in turn a character whose response to that is to make her ability to choose exactly what she does so utterly undeniable that even if you hate her, even if you think she's repulsive, even if you want to throttle her, you cannot pretend she is not in control. In that specific context, adding in the idea that she would choose her own gender, in defiance of a Cybertronian culture that implicitly treats gender as an alien unwelcome influence, so she can have what she wants- that rules. There's also such a line to be drawn there between Arcee's arc and Whirl, I think, that is so great. That's where I see why it is so good. Being seen as just a gun to be aimed that everyone professes distaste for but still wants to stick around and do dirty work, but you insist upon your interiority being seen as just that; your interiority. And all the things the people who want to do to you which you hate being what you embrace. It's fantastic. I simply prefer that as an angle through which to view the ideas than like... haha well Whirl's holoform is Girl With Guns how funny. You know?

And one of her most "humanising" moments is when she extends that to someone else. I'm thinking of when she tells Tailgate that Cyclonus was lying about his injuries; that part where Cyclonus is trying to protect Tailgate in a way that is ultimately toxic for them both. Sure, everyone else agrees that the best way to handle this is to lie for your own good so you don't make a decision people don't want you to. But that's not fucking fair, and who gets to decide what's "your own good"? Viewing that in light of a Whirl who is not just vaguely a woman but specifically linking that to the way Whirl's rigidly defined role under a functionist heel ruined her sense of identity, because they know what's best for you whether you like it or not- damn, that is COMPELLING. And I find that just. So much more compelling than what fandom so often does with the idea. Whirl, above all else, knows how important demanding agency is. I think that makes Whirl a character ripe for a reading as trans, and I love that for her so much. she'll grab you by the throat and make you acknowledge her. and she's right every step of the way, no matter how much you want to look away. i love her.

tl;dr WHIRL TRANS WOMAN GOOD. LOVE IT. no really i just, it's so good.

[allthegothihopgirls]

Hc that Jason really resonated with Frankenstein’s monster after he came back from the dead and his terrorization of Bruce is, in part, inspired by the monsters terrorization of Victor

ok i'm gonna preface this by saying what the fuck anon (/pos). i've been talking about this concept since it popped into my inbox i'm actually OBSESSED.

clawing at the insides of my enclosure foaming at the mouth etc etc

anyways, 1000% YES. the whole thing of jason being put back together not only at the hands of another, but also in a way which is so so unfamiliar to the him he knew before death, soooo extremely frankenstein's monster-coded.

both brought to life by impossible circumstances, and neither feel as though they own their autonomy. searching for some kind of redemption, needing to feel complete or avenged.

both having a sense of justice, shunned by society, one which doesn't earn them praise but instead punishment and disgust. both resenting the decisions of their creators/mentors. torn between worlds, neither of which they feel accepted in. oh my GOD.

i'm a huge fan of the whole idea of jason coming back and feeling displaced and in an entirely foreign body, and that's just oh so frankenstein's monster..

like IMAGINE that being his frame of reference for his feelings. put together what feels like piece by piece, messily, with only second-hand scraps. all with no regard for the person he was before, only with the intentions of being 'repurposed'.. AHHHHH

(as well as the fact that it's ALL mental for jason, he comes back 'perfect', unscathed and replenished. he has no physical justification for feeling the way he does, second-hand and hand-sewn. his feeling of 'monstrosity' stems from elsewhere; the feeling he gets walking around in this body which is simply not his, or the look in bruce's eyes when he sees him again for the first time, seeing a monster not a son.)

also the conscious knowing that his make-up is no longer his own, he's composed of parts which are unrecognisable to his old body, the one he owned and hand-carved through age. having to walk through days, feeling his actions as his own, but having a body which warps the intent behind them to all onlookers.

god imagine, blaming your creator for your fate, and needing the answers of your inadequacy to come from him himself.. and no other source can explain your imperfection in a way you can accept, it has to be him. jason NEEDS bruce's validation, to confirm or deny that he is irredeemable and a lost cause.

as much as i don't think jason would take pride in relating so much to frankenstein's monster, it's definitely a lingering thought in the back of his mind, something that determines his own story and outcomes.

he thinks of him when he loses control, and knows that he can't use it to justify the way he acted. he cannot tell the monster that his actions were okay, and that the people just did not understand, although as much as he wants to.. because he knows that isn't the case. he knows the monster was always a monster, and grows to feel the same way about himself.

he resents the way he acts, because all he sees is the monster. the one who acts according to his moral compass, but is always wrong. always clouded by his monstrosity. he decides he really should never trust himself or his intuition, because it's always disgusting and ugly, and even he'll be able to look back in retrospect and be repulsed by the way he carried himself, and not hate the way everyone punished him for it.

he wants so desperately to get himself back, morph back into the boy who knew his rights and wrongs and was never looked at funnily for acting how any normal person would. but the only part of his past self that still exists is in his mind, he wants to rip it out and show people that it's still him inside of there, but he simply can't do that.

his body changed without his permission, he never asked to be an abomination, a scientifical anomaly. he wants to scream about how it's not his fault, how he's not what the world paints him to be. how he can just be normal. but he's never really going to feel that way, as long as his mind and body remain two separate entities at war.

i feel like he clings onto the humanity of frankenstein's monster, and uses him as an anchor, something that shows him it's possible to remain acceptable and human.

i also think he analyses the character oh so deeply, to try and latch onto all the relatability he can find, the things he doesn't get from real people.

maybe he has a copy of the book, annotated in such a personal way. perhaps someone else stumbles upon it, and is just so distraught by the conclusions drawn from the scribbles and highlights, the way jason seems to view himself.

the way that although jason's always seen himself like the monster, unloveable and unacceptable, everyone else was always ready to accept him.

that maybe the real downfall of jason and frankenstein's monster is that the way they viewed themselves was too focused on the displacement they felt, assuming automatically that everyone else must feel the same way about them, if not worse. not taking the moment to let people learn to love them all over again.

anyways, unreliable narrators post resurrection!jason todd and frankenstein's monster, who were always seen with at least an ounce of humanity, but were both overridden by self-hatred and the disgust of their form, which led them to total exile and isolation.

[edenfenixblogs]

Hi, I have a question and you seem like a really balanced person, so here goes: I want to join a drag king collective, and I’m so excited about it, but the king leading it has some Interesting views. It’s the kind of thing where it’s constant “fuck Zionists” and what feels like extremely performative activism (Palestinian flag in bio but no actual fundraising/peace efforts, posting misinformation/irresponsible rhetoric etc.) I’m scared that if I join it I’ll be treated different, and even more scared that my friends will think the antisemitism justified (they aren’t great at understanding what antisemitism looks like these days). Idk what to do about the fear of someone being antisemitic because I don’t want it to stop me from doing what I want, but I also know it’ll devastate me if it does happen. If you can offer any insight I’ll be very grateful.

Hi friend!

I'm really glad you reached out to me. Not because I pretend to know all the answers, but because I love that we can all rely on each other during this time.

Unfortunately, whether you sign up for this is ultimately a matter of your own personal priorities and how you are prone to handle confrontation.

Personally, if it was me, I would join. I'm not afraid of defending myself (but I very much used to be, so no shame if you're not there yet). If I wanted to explore my gender identity through performance (if indeed that is what you are doing. I've never been personally drawn to perform drag, so I cannot pretend to know exactly why one might start. But I don't think I'm out of line to assume that it involves some kind of exploration or critique of gender both personally and societally) I certainly wouldn't let antisemites be the reasons I didn't go for it.

If the Anti-Zionist jerk starts coming at you, you can simply say "OK, great. Real quick question: What's a Zionist?" And watch him squirm to say anything real or substantive other than "a Jew." He might say, "They're basically Nazis!" or "They're people who want Palestinians to suffer!" or some other confidently incorrect hyperbolic statement. If he does so, you can say, "Oh! Well, then that's definitely not what I am," and move on.

If he says something slightly more substantive, like, "They're people who think Jews should get to take land from Arabs/Palestinians in order to have a Jewish ethnostate!" You can use the same response as above. But you can also say, "Oh, weird. That's definitely not what I thought it was. Which Zionist Jews have said this, exactly? Cuz I heard it was something completely different." Remember, their goal isn't actually to educate you or help anyone or even to provide limited but factual information. The goal is to shame you into aligning with their self-righteous point of view. That is not an effective tactic when you respond with QUESTIONS instead of outright CORRECTIONS. Making people explain themselves is a great way to defang a bad faith accusation like that.

Finally, they might say, "It's someone who supports Israel." In this case, either of the above methods will work. Or you could question even further. Here's an example of a chat:

You: Supports Israel how?

Jerkface: They want Biden to use our tax dollars to fund a genocide!

You: Oh, well then I'm definitely not a Zionist.

Jerkface: No, you don't understand! It's people who think that Jews can only be safe in a settler colonial apartheid ethnostate that justified its existence by crying about the Holocaust.

You: Well then I'm still not a Zionist. I don't know why you're assuming these things about me. But people should generally cry about the Holocaust. It was really bad thing that people did to Jews. Do you not think the Holocaust is a big deal?

Jerkface: Of course I think it was a big deal. That's why we all have to condemn THIS genocide. The Jews are the Nazis now.

You: I don't know. I don't think that' show Nazism works. But I definitely don't like genocide. If liking genocide makes a Zionist, then I'm definitely not whatever you're accusing me of.

Jerkface: No! I'm just saying that Zionists don't want a ceasefire. They're trying to kill all the Palestinians.

You: I don't know what to tell you then. Because that's still not me. Of course I want Hamas and Israel to both stop bombing each other.

Jerkface: No, Palestine is JUSTIFIED in bombing Israelis because of the oppression.

You: I think its weird that you're conflating Palestinians with Hamas. Are you saying that Palestinian civilians are bombing Israel as as a protest tactic? I thought for sure that Hamas, a terrorist organization, was the group responsible for Anti-Israeli violence. Personally, I've always though that most Palestinians just want to live in peace and don't support terrorism and violence. I don't know why it would harm Palestinians to suggest that both Israel and Hamas should end this conflict diplomatically rather than with violence.

Jerkface: Right! That's why we need to tell Biden to call for a ceaseefire!

You: OK, but I still don't know if you're saying Israel should just stop firing or that Israel and Hamas should stop bombing. I definitely want everyone to stop bombing each other. But I'm not really sure why Hamas would care about what Biden says.

etc...

I call this the "Rabbi method," because when you go to a rabbi, they never really give you an answer to your question. They answer with other questions designed to get them to see their own answer.

Either Hamas is a terrorist group unfairly targeting Israeli civilians and launching bombs into civilian territories--something that is clearly bad and which makes average Palestinian civilians innocent victims (this is the truth btw) that require both Hamas and Israel too lay down their arms. OR Palestinians and Hamas are interchangeable terms and the ongoing oppression of Palestinians have driven them to violent, offensive, armed resistance--which you may or may not agree with as a revolutionary tactic (To be clear, this is NOT TRUE OF PALESTINIANS. PALESTINIANS ARE NOT TERRORISTS AND DO NOT DESERVE TO BE BOMBED). Palestine IS NOT HAMAS. Hamas is bombing Israeli civilians.

Israel is retaliating with extreme force and prejudice against a terrorist organization in a way that is devastating the lives and futures of Palestinian Civilians, who very much deserve for all sides to lay down their weapons and address their mutual grievances diplomatically and responsibly. What is occurring right now is a messy, ugly, brutal war that is killing and traumatizing all civilians in the Levant. And a one-sided ceasefire leaves the side that ceases firing dead. A ceasefire means that EVERYONE must cease firing.

Unless Jerkface has a plan for how to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians from Hamas that also includes Israeli safety from Hamas, asking for Israelis to simply lay down all their weapons without any guarantee of safety is asking for a nation of mostly Jews to die without putting up a fight. And wanting Arab Israelis and also Jews not to die is not what Zionism means. It's not even what pro-Israel means. That's just called not being violently antisemitic, actually.

Israelis aren't mindless Zionist Nazi Monsters who get off on killing Palestinian babies. Palestinians aren't Noble Savages who have never done anything wrong as individual people and who are inherently morally superior to every single Israeli because they were born Palestinian. Both Israelis and Palestinians are complex, global micro-minorities who have both perpetrated tremendous harm to one another over the course of several decades, and neither group is going anywhere. Neither group deserves for its people to die. Neither group is only "worth helping" if western onlookers categorize them as "innocent" and "good." If someone's activism isn't geared toward respecting the inherent dignity of Palestinians and Israelis regardless of either group's history, then that person is not engaging in activism. If someone is asking you to support that cause because their chosen cause involves perfect cinnamon rolls being targeted by pure evil enemies, then they are not asking you to join them in activism. They are not even asking you to join them in a political reality. What they are asking is for you to join their toxic fandom.

And reducing this conflict down to simplistic fandom rhetoric is not going to help anyone and is frankly offensive to all Jews, Israelis, and Palestinians--all of whom deserve to be seen for the traumatized, suffering, imperfect people they are.

People don't earn support by being good. They inherently deserve support, because they are people.

All that said, maybe it's not emotionally useful for you to engage in this group. Maybe this type of conflict is too much for you. That's OK, too.

And while I would never let antisemitism take away an opportunity for me to fulfill a dream, I will say that my experience of Antisemitism during this time is 100000000% responsible for making me realize that the dreams I had before this experience need to evolve. I no longer wish to be in the town where I live. I wish to be home with my family closeby, because when the chips are down, that's who matters. The idea of moving back to my home state was unthinkable to me before October. Now? I cannot get out of here fast enough. There's nothing I want that is exclusive to my current location anymore. The community I thought I'd built for myself is gone. And while antisemitism didn't take them from me, it sure as fuck showed me that I never had it in thee first place.

If you're going to join this collective, be sure its worth the fight. And if it's not worth the fight, then look for a place that is. Exploring your gender identity freely should not come at the cost of living your ethnic and religious identities openly. Ever.

Don't trade one closet for another. You deserve more than that. We all do.

hope that helps @kit-chaos-doodle

[incubationformadness]

in ur last post u mention that effie trinket is both a "victim and perpetrator" of her government...do u consider her a good or bad person

That's a very relevant question, and honestly, I think that she is an extremely grey character.

It's reductive to put people in general into a good/bad dichotomy - but in the case of THG, one of the main thing I got out of it is that extreme circumstances are corruptive. Peeta recognises this in book 1, with his famous line about not wanting the Capitol to change him (oh, Peeta). Despite the scale of the atrocities in the series, most of the characters we meet are not malevolent - they are merely trying to survive. Even the unambiguously evil President Snow attempts to justify his tyrannical regime by claiming that it is necessary for controlling societal chaos.

I personally dislike how Effie is commonly portrayed in fanfic as this "innocent cinnamon roll who can do no wrong". She is a grown woman, for one thing, and also, I think it takes away any moral depth and complexity to her. Part of that is to do with the canon material - book!Effie is very thinly sketched, as she is not really relevant to the plot other than to catalyse Katniss' volunteering. She is the first depiction of a Capitolite, so she embodies them to an almost comical degree - she's silly, fastidious, and sentimental. And unlike her film portrayal, book!Effie is never depicted as involved in the rebellion, which leaves the lessons she has learned from her life under Snow's regime inconclusive.

As I am drawing my inspiration from book canon rather than film canon, this gives me a lot of flexibility. As book!Effie is always concerned with appearances, this allows for me to add a great deal of turmoil and conflict that goes unseen by Katniss. I don't want Effie to be a shallow caricature, but neither do I want to make her into someone unrecognisable from Collins' work.

I also did not want to make her into someone who did not question the system she exists in until Katniss and Peeta. We don't know how long Effie's been escorting in canon, but she's the only escort which Katniss mentions in her lifetime, and in my fic her career begins with the 60th Hunger Games. That's a lot of dead tributes, and it would make my version of Effie extremely callous to simply not care about them. And Haymitch would never end up with someone who sees children as nothing more than cannon fodder.

Nonetheless, fic!Effie goes into her career as an escort not because she has some grand ideas of helping tributes but because she desires admiration and fame. Her primary income is sourced in the Annual Child Murder competition. The tributes do not occur to her until she actually begins interacting with them. After the 61st Games she's having difficulty stomaching both the deaths of her tributes and the sexual exploitation of the victors. What is significant, however, is that she does not ask Haymitch whether she is culpable; she asks him whether he still wants her around as escort. This is the epicentre of Effie's character. She is currently a true moral neutral, driven by her interpersonal relationships rather than any ideology. As she keeps telling herself, if she wasn't an escort, someone else would be.

Unlike my OC Alseid, fic!Effie cannot conceive of a world in which she is not living under fascism. If Valeria is all id, and Alseid is all superego, Effie is the ego balanced between the two. She is not a revolutionary, but she does not take any kind of sadistic pleasure in the Games - she is someone who seeks to adjust and adapt, to make the best of a terrible situation.

Is she culpable? Yes, to an extent. Is she well-meaning? Yes, definitely. Effie's opinion of the Capitol will evolve as the fic goes along. But I personally see her as someone composed of both positive and negative traits. My fic is not a moral fable about right and wrong, it's a dystopian romance. What I want to explore is not can these characters still be redeemed? but rather can these characters still love, and be loved?

[edwad]

Do you ever worry all of the critique you're mounting on Marx is "too academic"? Not that it's necessarily incorrect, but that it won't translate these into changes in political practice in the world even if it's accepted that your critique has merit?

If Marx was just an abstract philosopher who was fumbled around with in the hands of academics only, perhaps this question would seem absurd. But that's not the case for Marx - he and his thought, however incomplete and incoherent, is still grappled with by political actors, however incompletely and incoherently themselves.

And there a whole world of "politics" that "the Left" the world over, still haunted and driven by Marx and Marxism, takes part in...organizing parties and taking part in elections, (intra)-union organzing, legal advocation, protests and mass demonstration, education and seminars, fighting guerilla wars, building communes, etc...and I presume that you are part of the Left that sees all of this action as pointing towards, if only potentially or latently or incoherently, towards revolution and communism.

What are you hoping your intervention does in this world? Are you aiming for a specific, identifiable change in the world of politics and of the Left? Or does the critique justify itself on intellectual grounds alone, even if one can't imagine clear changes in politics and social practice following from it?

i always think it's a bit funny when people level accusations against me of being too "academic" when not only am i totally outside of academia but i probably had less (and worse!) formal schooling than them. i don't say this because i think you're making that kind of case (i certainly read you as being more charitable than that, although maybe you really are going for a dig, idk), but because i think it's clear that even undereducated lowlifes like me have some vested interest in these things for both theoretical and practical reasons. its not about job security for me in the ivory tower, its just the kind of things i think about on the way to and from work (my long reblog earlier was written on the way to my store). to more directly address your question, i think these things have meaningful stakes which aren't reducible to the luxury of academics peddling abstract thinking (although, most of my academic friends are pretty broke too, so im not trying to joust with them here as much as with this notion of an institutionalized marx scholarship that im somehow dabbling in). the takeaway here shouldn't simply be "what if marx is wrong about the political economists he's working with", it's "what if marxs analysis of the system, and by extension, his critique of it, falls flat"

this has political stakes for anybody whose political thinking and aspirations involve using marx as a resource. if he gets capitalism wrong (and, if immanent critique means anything, how could he get that part wrong while adequately understanding the system which is supposed to directly account for the object he is critiquing?) then what does that mean for our anti-capitalism? sure, we could be productively misreading him and still demanding things which maybe aren't justified by his analysis but which are worth pursuing, but how can even tell? by what standard? what if actually our well-intended political maneuvers simply make things worse, as plenty of liberal thinkers would suggest? we can say "yeah well they're dumb liberals so they don't know anything", but this only works if you can safely assume you're right and that they're wrong on the basis of a semi-coherent understanding of the world around you. the ways you struggle against that world is shaped by your understanding of it, and the things you hold against it or the possibilities for what it could be are entirely bound up with what can only be called a "theory" of the system. i think the theory we have of the system has significant political/practical consequences, and if marx is wrong about all of this then we'd be forced to rethink what that means for us as marx-influenced communists.

in that sense, im not demanding a particular change in political strategy, im interested in posing a problem which i think we have to be able to answer. otherwise the whole thing collapses and we might as well settle for social democracy or whatever.

[utilitycaster]

A lot of people who try to analyze religion in Exandria need to watch the Adventuring Academy episode where Brennan and Matt talked about worldbuilding, specifically when Matt said “In a game like dungeons and dragons, or a lot of role playing games where ultimately part of the game is to overcome villains and rise up and become a hero, there has to be some level of universal antagonism… there is a pure and defined entity or force that is evil, it may not be realistic to some stories out there, but that’s [how it works in DND].”

This is true, and it's really interesting to watch this happen because Matt will make a huge, unambiguous evil like Lucien or the Vanguard, or Brennan will do so with Asmodeus and people will do everything they can to try to come up with reasons to woobify them or argue why they're justified...but I haven't seen this happen in most of the D20 seasons, and I think it's because the villains in most D20 seasons have been things that reinforce people's beliefs, namely, capitalism and abuse of religious power. And to be clear, capitalism and abuse of religious power fucking suck, but it's telling that people assume the villain is capitalism in places where that doesn't apply on a wide scale, or in some cases, exist (EXU Calamity, Neverafter); or that the Ruby Vanguard or Tomb Takers, both of which have pretty much every single hallmark of a cult but just aren't affiliated with the main pantheon, are actually the good guys.

Incidentally: this is like, quite literally how people get sucked into cults. One of the leading cult researchers in the world, Janja Lalich, is a survivor of a now dissolved explicitly leftist/anti-capitalist cult. Abuses of power, which is, ultimately, what both Brennan and Matt lean on as their Universal Antagonist traits, rely on confirming people's existing biases and exploiting them - even if those biases are broadly good! This is in fact why I can get so fucking adamant about what is mostly silly fandom shit, because I do, on some level, look at some takes that completely lack critical thinking and am like oh you'd 100% buy into all kinds of dangerous patterns of thought if someone packaged it nicely; even something as stupid as the Caleb Werewolf Theory relied on circumstantial evidence and false information that you could easily verify was false. And it's annoying but mostly harmless in the context of fandom, but it always makes me wonder - does this person do this with political posts on social media?

Anyway getting back to the main point, I think watching/listening to Brennan commentary on Adventuring Academy is generally a really good idea because he is a very smart guy with a philosophy degree and has a strong grasp of the genres in which he works as well as TTRPGs as a storytelling medium, and talks to other people who also have a good understanding of the morality of fantasy stories. And if you listen to this, you will in fact get that the basis of evil in these stories is not something as specific as "capitalism" or "religion"; it's quite literally as basic as "exploiting other people simply because that is an option available to you and you don't care about them." And obviously that's the whole basis of capitalism, and it's a serious problem that exists within organized religion, but like...not to repeat myself from this weekend but I keep thinking about the "Suvi without the imperialism" and it's like...she is a 20 year old woman whose parents died for a cause and we have had ONE episode with her as an adult. We know nothing about the Empire except that it's an empire and it is at war. Like, can you look at imperialism and understand why it's bad? Can you separate the concept of imperalism - which, to be clear, is based on power structures - from say, your 21st century understanding of empires in the real world? Or do you see the word Empire and go "Bad Thing" without any capacity to analyze because that's how you end up looking at two flawed things in a story (well, if we're lucky; see the middle paragraph) and deciding one is perfect and correct for no reason other than because it opposes the thing you think is worse. And Brennan is REALLY good at skewering that, and Matt is REALLY good at portraying multiple complicated and flawed perspectives, but you do have to like, use your brain slightly.

[nitewrighter]

Hey, uh, about the "retcons" in Overwatch's story, do you know which ones are genuine retcons and which ones are additional lore added into the story?

That's a good question, because I've been in this fandom for 6 years and I've seen a lot of people call things retcons that were really just lore reveals that went against fanon. Like for example, when Moira was introduced to the game, a lot of people were saying that it retconned Mercy being the creator of Reaper, when that's not true--a lot of people headcanoned the idea of "Mercy created Reaper" into fanon because Reaper had an elimination line for Mercy that said, "Don't forget, this is all your fault" but it was also never clear if that was an elimination line he had for Overwatch members in general, or if that was referring to something else, or if it was just a taunt. In any case, there simply weren't enough details on Reaper's condition before for Moira's addition to the cast and her corresponding lore of giving Reaper his abilities to call Moira's entry into the lore a retcon. (Also it's just fucking dumb to saddle literally every medical science thing Overwatch was up to onto Mercy I mean come on, people.)

Reaper having a family? Also definitely not a retcon, we see him stalking what is presumably his son and his family in the Christmas "Reflections" comic way back in 2016--and his family is mentioned again in Ana's "Bastet" short story.

Is the Cassidy Name change a retcon? I mean there had been hints at Cassidy using pseudonyms before in certain voice lines and also in the "Joel Morricone"/"My name's not Joel" bit with Sombra. But anyway I think the meta factor of not wanting to associate a fan favorite character with a predatory Blizzard employee is justifiable enough to just... hand wave the name change. I mean they still have the old name on his "Trainhopper" comic so I guess the Pseudonym lore bit is just there so they don't need to worry about changing it back in older media---but also that just shows that Blizz is lazy as hell because if I can edit and replace over a 1000 mentions of Cassidy's old name in my 300k+ word main fic continuity, I'm pretty sure they can edit a 10 page comic.

I feel like they've also always been a bit iffy on the whole status of God AI's, particularly Anubis. Like the lore says "Anubis and other god programs were quarantined in Egypt" but we never hear anything about any other God AI and it's Anubis that kicked off the omnic crisis, apparently, But I'll have to read the Sojourn novel to be clear.

For me the most egregious and clear retcon is the changes they made to Widow in what is clearly a hamfisted attempt to give her more 'agency.' In the previous lore, as we see in Ana's comic "Legacy," Overwatch thought Amélie Lacroix was either kidnapped again or dead following the death of Gérard LaCroix. She disappeared off the face of the earth (presumably doing super secret assassinations for Talon) and basically didn't appear again until she put Ana's eye out. In Widowmaker's new bio, which came out with Overwatch 2, they say that the police were pursuing Amélie as a suspect in Gérard's death and Amélie willingly went to Talon because she had nowhere else to go and quote, "Killing Gérard made her feel alive." Like, when you're being pursued by the cops, and you've literally already been brainwashed to kill your husband, I don't think there's actual agency there.

For me the old Widow backstory was a lot better because it made her scarier and more nuanced as a character, it made the stakes feel higher in the universe, and it doesn't make the timeline confusing with what Moira was up to at the time. And also Widowmaker taking out Ana's eye is vital to Ana's character because Amélie is part of the body of Overwatch's failures. All of Ana's thoughts leading up to the point where Widowmaker takes her eye out indicate how Talon has been in Overwatch's blind spot, both figuratively and literally. So all around it's just kind of a dumb choice that turned a genuinely eerie character who partially represents the failures and vulnerabilities of Overwatch into a boring generic Femme Fatale.

But yeah anyway I would say, compare the new Overwatch 2 bios to the old comics and kind of make your own judgments from there.

[mdhwrites]

There's something I don't understand... since the Collector (or one of his siblings) trapped the owl beast in the scroll, but couldn't the Collector remove Eda's (and by extension, Lilith's) curse and free the owl beast from her body since he's basically a young god? Even if they insist on treating the curse like a chronic illness, it wouldn't have hurt to mention it since it just seems like a plot hole.

So the only time this would matter would be in the epilogue. Otherwise, the Collector is never on Eda and Lilith's side and so doing a kindness of that sort for them wouldn't make sense. Maybe taking it away to depower them while the Collector is ruling the Isles but that's frankly more work than just turning them into a puppet. Should he have done it at the end? Eeeeh. I think the creators reasonably decided that Harpy Lilith would be a flashier way that more fans would want to see as a resolution to the curse than simply getting rid of it. It also allows those who see it as a disability or chronic illness to not just have a god whisk away those issues but instead see how these characters are thriving in spite of it. Not that I'm too happy with the allegory in the end with the Harpy forms, I'd rather be rid of my own disability frankly than pretend it's a superpower but *shrug*.

I wouldn't call this a plot hole though. Nothing is actively contradicting this point or is missing from the logic of the show's events to justify it as one. That's what causes plotholes after all. When something actively goes back on what it has shown or done or blatantly changes the rules of reality for what it wants to do. I would personally argue that TOH's biggest plotholes either go to A: Why the fuck was Belos able to make a portal out of a stone arch and Titan's Blood and LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE and it worked better somehow than the explicit instructions that he himself left on how to make a portal door? There's just a LOT of levels of bullshit and contradictions that we're never going to get an explanation for. B: "How do we stop this draining spell that kills people by feeding on their magic?" "I know! Let's mix it with a curse that turns people into monsters by feeding on and corrupting their magic!" And then everyone should have just stared at whoever offered that idea before immediately moving on with the meeting like nothing had happened and that person hadn't said anything. And yes, it's trying to play off of Eda's Requiem but in that, I never got the feeling of "This weakened the spell," I got the feeling of "OH! This made it so she has a disintegration spell!" because let's face it: Her and Raine's spell was not WEAKER than anything else Raine could do. Not if it was their only option to nullify, stop and then murder two coven heads who were actively trying to find them.

God this show's writing got stupid. Then again, in both cases you have plot holes that exist because, well... The show wrote itself in a corner. The show spent so much time on Belos' backstory and on Hunter and Lumity in S2 that they hadn't actually come up with a real way to stop The Day of Unity. Even if you do want to use Eda's Requiem as an excuse, they also have to retcon in that same scene the fact that Darius, Eber and Raine can't just sit out the ceremony anymore like they had previously established, making the one way they HAD established to beat it not matter anymore, even though Odalia could have just told Luz about an off screen raid that was happening on the CAT's hideout and effectively nothing changes except Eda doesn't lose an arm. The other is of course the portal. The portal not working immediately is a cool idea but one they don't explore AT ALL. And it presents the obvious problem of "Okay, what was the missing piece?" Yes, Belos theoretically knows that piece but even his Isles door looked like it needed a lot of extra elements to function and work properly that let you assume that what Luz had gotten before was a prototype door, not the real thing. But... Then it's literally just a stone archway and liberal application of Titan's Blood because Belos is a monster and can't have gotten the materials for a proper door anymore. What leads to these moments in both cases aren't bad ideas but they're also stepping away from the fantasy genre without knowing why the genre uses these tropes. Why can't you just remove one of the things necessary for the villain to win is a common problem for a lot of fantasy stories and most are just smart not to EVER BRING IT UP because of it. Magic working on the first try may not make sense but it means that there isn't further experimentation that's required, or the spell only works once before devouring itself or the like, a trope TOH even played into because suddenly the door required more Titan Blood every time it was opened and yet the key isn't fully drained after probably hundreds of years. It's all a part of that feeling of TOH wanting to be smarter than it's writers are. At least for this genre.

[unwelcome-ozian]

Hi, this could end up being a really long ask so I apologise in advance, but I feel it's important you know about this!

I noticed you recommended Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde as a source when answering some asks about Finland before! I would like to let you know that while she was indeed the provincial medical officer for Lapland region (never chief medical officer, as she liked to claim to any english readers of hers) at one time, her writings should be taken with a HUGE grain of salt. I'm sure there's useful information mixed in there, but she's unfortunately most well known for claiming things like: aliens live among us on earth, trips to moon are done twice every week, humans already have colonies in mars and do manned flights to saturn, that she has been in both psychic and physical contact with aliens and alternate universes, that the swine flu vaccines were/are dangerous because they contain microchips that monitor and control people, that streetlights in Helsinki are used to mind-control people, called the 2011 Norway Attacks a conspiracy, and a lot more. Most of what she said is simply not very likely whatsoever. One quote from a tv-interview she did is that the entire swine influenza vaccine program is/was just a global scheme to kill people to control overpopulation, and that pregnant women and children were selected especially, because the plan was to "eliminate the next generation".

Originally she only talked about believing in ghosts and that aliens exist and claimed that death isn't a real thing (because ghosts), but was otherwise a reliable medical professional, but after she was in a serious car crash in 1985 and retired from being the Provincial Medical Officer in 1987 (she was on sick leave for the entire time between 85-87 after the crash, and retired because she was not able to continue in her position anymore. It's implied she received brain damage in said crash, from what I understand, and never quite recovered) she started becoming more and more out of touch with her claims.

It shows in her writings- her first book from 1982, Kuolemaa Ei Ole ("Death Does Not Exist"), is simply about her belief in ghosts and that she feels she has proof of death not being "permanent" or "final", because she "received messages from the dead using psychography". Something that, while I don't believe in, was fairly harmless and just something she believed in and wrote about. At that time, she was also the chairwoman of the Lapland Parapsycholgy Association (Lapin Parapsykologinen Seura), from 1981 to 1986.

Her next book, from 1991, Tähtien Lähettiläs ("Envoy of/from the Stars"), is, on the other hand, full of her UFO-claims and how actually, aliens are all around us and talks about how mankind will experience "moral degeneration" and become "contaminated" in regards to that. Not a lot of sense in any of it. As it turns out she was also kicked out from the parapsychological association because even they started thinking her claims were WAY out there, and that she wasn't fit for the chairman position because of it.

From what I've managed to gather from online discussions from the early 00's, most people do not take her seriously, even people who actually do believe in aliens or ghosts. (My other sources for all this include reading summaries of her books, official records, interviews and articles from Finnish sources online)

According to the very few victims of/people with knowledge of ramcoa here in Finland that I know of, she has zero credibility and her claims are not only inaccurate but dangerous because while she does have some accurate things to say (i.e. US government is involved in mind control across the world) most of it is heavily misdirected and used to justify her UFO beliefs instead of actually taking any kind of a critical look at potentially malicious foreign actors in Finland, suspicious activity within Finland, etc. It's very much a case of "we have colonies in Mars and Aliens live among us but nobody knows or believes this because everyone is being mind controlled by low-frequency radiowaves, microwaves or microchips that monitor them 24/7 implanted when giving vaccines to people".

Personally, I wouldn't recommend her works to anyone- mostly because it's impossible to separate the grains of truth from her personal conspiracy beliefs. Sadly, there aren't really any Finnish sources with published work out there that are at least somewhat reliable, so I don't really have any alternatives to recommend to you, but I wanted to at least let you know what her actual reputation here is since whenever she is mentioned in English she usually gets given a LOT more credit than she should be, probably because as far as I know, her Finnish works were never translated to English and she didn't talk as much about these things in English (my personal belief is that she didn't go full-on UFO & antivaxx internationally because she wanted to maintain at least some credibility with international audiences in regards to mind control, behaviour manipulation and so on, and possibly to sell more of the english book she worked on right before her death in 2015).

Also, the back of her english book claims she was "the former acting director of environmental health and health education of national institute of health of Finland in Helsinki" - an institute by that name does not exist, and there are no records of her ever being even associated with any official institutes she COULD be referring to.

She also claimed (on the back of that same book) to have been "government of Finland representative in World Health Organization in Geneva", which is another blatant lie. She has never had anything to do with either the government of Finland, OR WHO. The ONLY international work she ever did was practicing medicine as a physician in Pakistan and Indonesia before she was the provincial medical officer, and this was charity/aid work. I believe she may have lived in Geneva for a while, but that's all there is to it. Basically, she lied about her credentials to international readers and the things she has said in her Finnish sources are so out there her claims make Svali look like the most truthful and trustworthy individual to ever live. I wouldn't trust someone who can't even stay consistent between what she says to her native readers vs to her international ones, especially when she lied about her credentials so egregiously to the latter. She knows Finns could actually check these things easily so she never did this with her Finnish books, most likely she just hoped no Finn would ever read her English work and vice versa.

Sorry this is such a long ask! I felt it was important to let you know though. Thank you for all the work you do on this blog!

Thanks for the information and sharing it.

Here’s a link to the post the ask is talking about. LINK

Oz

[piqued-curiosity]

"It's so clear to me that people who say we should have more patience and compassion for young homophobes are coming from a place of sympathy for the young homophobes and not for the young homosexuals"

Not that same anon, but didn't you just reblog this? Does make it seem like you're agreeing she's being deeply homophobic as a motivation. Ppl are being really misogynistic to her on anon but that's not your problem. It does seem like you're saying homosexuals have a right to be annoyed at this situation, but bisexuals don't have a right to be annoyed at their rape statistics being belittled, and that the woman that said those things is not a misogynist because you find her and her core message admirable. If that's not what you meant to express in both cases, I don't think you expressed it very well.

I did reblog that. Because I believe it generally, not just in response to one post on tumblr. As I said in my own post, the idea of “be nice to homophobes, they have good intentions/don’t know better” is common. Whether it be religious homophobes who “are just following what their religion tells them! Don’t be so hard on them!” Or elderly people who “grew up in a different time, it’s not their fault”, or regular ignorant people who “just haven’t really been exposed to that stuff, cut them some slack”…or yes, TRA homophobes of all ages who “are just following the dominant ideology!” (Reminds me a lot of the arguments in favour of religious homophobes).

I understand that post was a response to the other post, but I also understood it to be speaking to the problem in general. Which, as I said in my own post, is the reason that post struck a nerve with homosexuals. Because it’s the same shit we hear all the time—that we have to be sympathetic to homophobes because “they don’t know any better”.

I also understood that post to not be saying “people who do this are homophobic!!! Shameeee!!!”…but simply saying they’re coming from a place of sympathy for homophobes instead of sympathy for homosexuals. Which, yes, is homophobic, but different from being a raging homophobe like you think I’m accusing the OP of being (I’m not). Many people’s thoughts (again, not just a tumblr user) regarding homophobia are to sympathise with the homophobe before the homosexual. The thought process is “well, they don’t know any better, sucks you have to experience their bigotry but try to be easy on them, they’re doing their best” which gets really frustrating. Because the first thought is to justify the homophobia, not to protect the homosexual from it.

No, I don’t think the OP was purely homophobic in her motivations, and as I said I agree that when it comes to kids, the approach from adults needs to be different than it would be with other adults. I don’t think she should be being targeted with misogyny. But I’m also just kind of tired of constantly seeing reasons why gay people shouldn’t be so angry with homophobes.

On another note….I find it really weird that people keep bringing up me supporting the message of one misogynistic lesbian a while ago (which I explicitly critiqued when I reblogged it) whenever I critique something else. I don’t think I ever said bi women don’t have a right to be upset at rape statistics being belittled???? Or that I didn’t think that woman was being misogynistic??? As I’ve said before, if people can keep bringing up me saying “she does have a point with the core message here despite her misogyny” and acting like it makes me a terrible person, I’d like to point out that OSA radfems on here actually worship and idolise lesbophobe Andrea Dworkin and never get any slack for it. But a lesbian agrees with another lesbian talking about a specific type of lesbophobia, and “ohhhh we must send angry anons about it because that lesbian was misogynistic and none of her words can ever be listened to!!! Btw read this Dworkin excerpt! Never mind the beastiality talk that’s vaguely racist and the incest talk haha”

And guess what, I also like things Dworkin has said. She has some brilliant points and I plan on reading some of her works because I like the excerpts I’ve seen. Because no, I don’t think we should throw a whole work out because of distasteful opinions of the creator. I myself have reblogged Dworkin quotes, I’m sure more than I’ve reblogged quotes from lesbians perpetuating misogyny…yet I’ve never once gotten anons saying “oh wow, so you clearly support political lesbianism”. This tells me that everyone does agree with me about taking the good parts and discarding the bad parts…but only when it comes to OSA women. Lesbians must never be granted that grace and instead their work must be thrown out if it isn’t a paragon of morality.

[22degreehalo]

When it comes to interpreting why men act the way they do, something I always find confusing is when people assume that it must be for a completely different reason to why women act that particular way.

Like, if a woman prefers to keep the company of women, and avoids interacting with men they don't know, one explanation tends to come up immediately: men are scary. She's afraid of men hurting her, and finds women safer.

But isn't that just as valid a reason for men to prefer to approach women rather than men?

Men are actually more likely to be victims of violence by other men than women are. And even if you ignore that, not all men are equally good at fighting or defending yourself. The sort of man to threaten a stranger is probably going to be capable of hurting an average guy - and not all men are 'average guys' in these capabilities.

Yet, if a man prefers to talk to women rather than men, it's almost always framed as a predatory act: that he prefers 'victims' who 'can't fight back'. But 'can't fight back' just means 'less likely to hurt me.' Sometimes it almost seems assumed that the man deserves to be 'hurt', and knows it, and is deliberately trying to 'wriggle out' of that justified punishment. A line of logic which, naturally, doesn't ever really seem to apply to women, except in the most grotesquely misogynistic circles.

As an example: at the library, we got a lot of Weirdos. In almost every single case, they were harmless, or at the very least obviously not intentionally harmful. A lot of people without anywhere to go, or lonely souls who sought refuge in this place where people are likely to be tolerant of them. (Isn't that funny, that people can praise the values of a library to 'simply let people be' or find community, while also denouncing others for 'pushing themselves on to people who are required by their job to be nice to them'?)

There was one guy who tended to be really talkative. Like, if you let him, he'd just stand around the front desk and keep up a conversation with you for a lonnnnng time, to the point of interrupting/obstructing actual library work. Unfortunate; we do have to do our jobs, and so just kinda by necessity had to find ways of interrupting that.

But he was never creepy. He never asked about our personal lives or tried to approach us outside of the library. He didn't get too close or try to push any other kind of boundary other than 'talking too long'. He didn't hit on us or even really try to build an actual relationship; part of the annoyance with him was that his reasons for talking were often so boring and pointless. (Like, he'd continually ask about whether we had books on some arbitrary subject, which even he obviously had no real interest in.)

The first time I got into a conversation with other librarians about it, we all agreed: we never felt creeped out or unsafe. And then a more senior librarian mentioned that he only ever did this whole routine with female librarians. Suddenly, the other librarian in the conversation got visibly creeped out, and started mulling over whether he was either possibly neurodivergent or 'a creep'. (Ofc, I pointed out that it's not impossible for both to be true.)

But... why? Why does that change everything? What if he prefers talking to women not because, IDEK, ~women are encouraged to coddle men's feelings~ or whatever vaguely ableist bullshit, but because... men are scary? What if he'd had the experience of approaching men for conversation, but got a harsh, angry, or hostile response? What if all this 'men are encouraged to see women as receptacles for their feelings' is actually just... 'men can be just as scared to open up to men as women are'?

And if he really was neurodivergent (I sorta suspected, if only because it was Weird Behaviour, and if someone's behaving weird, it's probably for a reason)... that's not a shallow concern. Neurodivergent people are much more likely to be physically assaulted. And, in this context: how many men might view a man randomly coming up and initiating a friendly conversation apropos of nothing (possibly while not observing 'typical' male closed-offness) as hitting on them? We all know about the gay panic defence, right? It is 100% a thing for some men (not all, not most, but you never know for sure who) to respond to any sign of queer attention with extreme hostility or violence.

Is it not at least possible that that's what happened to this guy, in the past? Or that he might have worried about it happening? And that preferring to converse with women was in fact mostly about preserving his own personal bodily safety - something which, I hope we can agree, all people are entitled to want to do?

Which is to say: where is the line between 'preferring people who can't fight back' and 'preferring people who aren't going to physically harm you'?

[shydroid3000]

#i keep thinking about this & cartesian dualism #like light. your body is YOU. #every part of it is YOU. your body is not just a cage for your mind#death note

@dancing-lex Your tags are making me think about something: So yeah, super yes with the Cartesian dualism connection. And in that vein.... Descartes framed non-human animals as automata who were not thinking/feeling but mechanistic. This view he used to justify vivisection on live animals, which he practiced/advocated for. (Now, vivisection was a common scientific practice then, but Descartes was notable for arguing that non-human animals did not actually feel pain or anything else, and thus something like vivisection was akin to taking apart a machine). Which..... I mean, can't help but remind me of the King of Justification, Light Yagami, ya know?? I mean, Descartes justifying vivisection as an act that was like totally fine and not something to feel bad about *at all*... is not that unlike Light going to great lengths to justify murdering (initially) two people, and then tens of thousands more. 'Cause murder is bad, but... the world is rotten and *his* specific kind of murder of a specific *kind* of person will actually make the world a better place. And he's the only one who could do it, so really it's his responsibility to. And I mean, vivisection did bring advancements and benefits for human society (and animal testing continues). And Kira brought certain ostensible benefits too. But in both cases, they rely on a fundamental devaluation of certain kinds of life. And with Descartes, a devaluation that involved reducing non-human life to nothing more than mechanical, things that experienced no more of an inner life than a clock. And while that's obviously not what Light thinks, it does feel like there's a sort of undercurrent of something similar there for him. I mean, the way he uses certain people around him as though, to him, they were simply tools (Misa, Takada, Mikami...). And the people he kills... the way they're engaged with mostly as just a category to him, rather than full individuals each with their own inner lives. I mean, in a way, he takes this sort of mechanistic view of the whole of human society. Something for Kira to take apart and reform so that it operates more smoothly. And like Descartes cutting into a living being, it really is okay for Light/Kira to slice into human society, remove an eye (for an eye), even stop its heart. And it's okay to not feel bad about the screams, really, because... well, he's God of the New World, and this is what a god does, and he's still *good* deep down, because it's all for a greater good. After all, humans are to a God kind of like what other animals are to a human, right? So he doesn't have to hurt inside when he hears whispers of screams on the wind, sees life fading from eyes in each sunset... right? Anyway, the framework of Cartesian dualism is really interesting to think about. It almost seems like to Light, he and L are the only two people he truly, truly conceives of as thinking beings in a way that really 'counts'. (Putting aside perhaps his family who I do think he values in his certain way). Like, other people walk around in their bodies having thoughts and feelings. But Light and L are minds, rational minds, in a way that transcends the more embodied existence of other humans. Anyway this feels so rambly and messy haha. It's very late (/early in the morning haha) where I am, so it may not entirely be coherent and I don't have the mental power to re-read and edit it haha. But your tags got my brain spinning, because the Cartesian dualism framework is an interesting lens to view Light through..!

Light is someone who perceives a very strong separation between the body and the mind, and is very disconnected from his own body. And I do wonder if, by nature of them being so similar, this is something he projects onto L as well; & helps him divorce the thought of the death of L's body (ie. his shell) from the death of L's mind (ie. his true self). So Light kills the body, the part of L that isn't really him, to incapacitate his mind, not kill it. He's compartmentalized it in such a way where he doesn't have to think of death as being true death.

It isn't until Light is about to die himself that he is able to mentally bridge the connection between his body & his own conscious existence, and realize what it really means to die.

[ratralsis]

I mentioned recently that my cat went through a sudden emergency that wound up costing me a few thousand dollars.

For a couple of weeks, it wasn't clear if he was going to fully recover. As it turns out, by buying him special prescription food that costs me about $5/day, he's doing much better now.

It sucks. I'm not happy that it's so expensive to feed him and keep him healthy. But that's how it is, and it can't possibly last forever. Since he turns 14 this month, it probably won't last more than a couple more years, frankly. But who knows. That's what I said about my other cat, who's been on slightly less expensive prescription food since January. She's 17, going to turn 18 at the end of the year.

They're both very old, and it's now costing me over $200/month just for food. It's absurd. I'm unhappy about it. I'm going to keep spending it just as long as they're both alive, because the alternative is to have them put down them for being expensive.

Which is what I'll do if either of them winds up requiring another surgery, because, while I can do my best to budget around $200/month for food, I simply can't afford another trip to the emergency clinic like I had in August.

This is where, if I had enough readers to justify it, I'd put a donation link where you could send me money. But it'd be to keep my cats alive. To cover my pet expenses. It'd feel wrong for me to ask for money for that, so I won't.

And yes, that does mean I feel a little conflicted about it when I see other people post those kinds of donation links. "Help me cover funeral expenses for my dog," that kind of thing. I just can't justify it. I know that pets are family members to a lot of people, and they're family members to me, too, but, in my case and only in my case, I feel that I'm the one who decided to take on the responsibility of pet ownership. I don't know the details of anyone else's case, so I'm just left wondering.

But, well, for now, both cats are doing alright, and, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to budget and save and be back to where I want to be in a few more months. November is one of two months in the year when I get three paychecks, so that'll help a lot.

We'll see what happens. I've been trying to find ways to earn more money this year, and, because I work in IT and tens of thousands of other IT workers were laid off at the start of the year, it simply hasn't happened yet. Maybe it'll happen soon. Who knows.

Or maybe, in a couple of years when I finish my book, I'll be able to start raking in that sweet, sweet passive income that I keep hearing about. I doubt it, though! I really, really doubt it!

That's enough of a life update for now. I'd like to get back to writing about writing again soon. My ad-supported Amazon Fire Tablet really pushed a book on me hard called Zodiac Academy: The Awakening, which I was able to download for no additional cost because I have some Kindle membership, and I made it about four pages in before the author's fixation on the first-person narrator's butt and their absolutely fucking awful punctuation (an inability to use commas, mainly) made me decide to stop reading. I'm not sure if I want to actually write about that or not, but I'm thinking about it.

I guess the series must be doing well, though. There are like ten books in the series? A lot of people must not give a shit about their authors being good at writing, which isn't shocking, but it is a bit sad for someone like me, who does.

I mean, just, like, hire a fucking proofreader. They're out there. They exist. Might even lead to enough additional copies of the books being sold to pay for the cost of it.

Okay. That's enough of everything for now.

[headcanonrepository]

Thoughts on Final Fantasy XII

I've been replaying Final Fantasy XII lately. I say replaying - I never actually finished it the first time around, yet have proudly denounced it as my least favourite entry in the series for years. But I decided that to be fair to that, I should actually finish the game, so I picked up Zodiac Age for cheap with the idea that I can show my wife exactly why I rate it so little. Definitely a 'get drunk and bitch about it' kind of idea. (So uh, sorry if this is your favourite game, but this is a pretty negative post, just FYI)

My original criticisms still hold up, for the most part. Vaan makes no sense as the main character - aside from stealing the first stone at the beginning of the game, his impact on the actual plot is nonexistent. The plot is something that happens around him, not something he drives and impacts. In fact, apart from Ashe and Balthier, it's really difficult to justify anyone's connection to the plot.

Compounding this is that no one ever really talks to each other or comments on the situations they are in. There are a few cutscenes, brief and far between, but for the most part, there's an immediate 'what next?' after every section that just serves to point the player in the right direction. We learn next to nothing about who the characters are as people - what do they think? What are they passionate about? What do they hate? We just don't know.

While I'm ragging on the plot: it's a dense opening with many kingdoms named, important leaders, and characters, all before you take control of a single one of them. It's a struggle to remember so many plot points introduced so rapidly, let alone care about them. The density of information continues throughout, where you are expected to remember who is part of which kingdom, who is an ally and who is foe and how different people's agendas are playing out from one scene to the next. It feels a lot like the prequel trilogy of Star Wars - lots of information introduced relatively quickly and without spending a lot of time memorising it, working out how and why things are happening is borderline impossible. I had a similar critique of the prequel SW movies: good plot and ideas, terrible execution. Unfortunately, FFXII doesn't have a whole miniseries to help the player comprehend the politics of Ivalice.

I really disliked the Gambit system the first time I played. It felt very much like getting the game to play itself and if that's the case, why am I playing a game? I'm just running from fight to fight. I appreciate it a little more now - mostly because I am a tired adult with limited game time so automatic fighting for 99% of the time combined with 2x speed (which honestly the original game should have had, it's been permanently on throughout this playthrough) makes it more palatable to grind and get through some of the longer travelling sections of the map. I also think it's partly because my expectation has shifted from 'strategy is what I choose to do in a fight' to 'strategy is how I prepare for the fight' - I was already aware of the gambit system and how to make it work so I could start having fun with trying new things.

However, the descriptions for some techniques are just ludicrous. The in-game text for Traveller lead me to assume that it gets stronger based on the total amounts of steps you've taken in the game (and similarly Horology for time spent in game). The wiki dispelled that illusion and confirmed that both attacks were pretty much useless unless you were micromanaging to a degree that I am simply not willing to do. Lots of the gameplay information is similarly vague and unhelpful. I feel like the only reason I understand what I'm doing is because I have played other Final Fantasy games (so I already know what the spells are supposed to do) or other RPGs (so I can guess that equipment will behave in a particular way or puzzles will react in a certain way). Even then, I've had to search for the odd solution (wait, you mean I have to summon the guy to open the door, not just touch it with the person who can summon him?).

The hunt sidequests are just tedious. There’s no need to pick up a hunt, then confirm with a separate NPC that you’ve accepted the hunt, then go to a third location to find the hunt (often with a stipulation that the mark can only be found when the weather is just right, which is largely random and results in you loading and unloading an area repeatedly to get the conditions right) and then go back to that NPC to claim the reward. Especially when none of those objectives are ever marked on your main map, and you can only access a reminder by opening up the main menu, selecting the clan primer, selecting hunts, scrolling through every hunt you’ve ever accepted (even completed ones) to find the current hunt, to see a description and on one very particular screen, you can open a map that has the hunt’s current objective marked. Unless it’s a hunt where it just gives a vague location for you to search. Those exist, too.

Speaking of tedious, the Great Crystal was a section designed to force you to use a guide. Prima must have bribed them for that, because I swear that place is impossible to navigate without a VERY detailed map - no ingame map, switches to open doors (on a timer) and multiple doors per switch that can actually wind up blocking access to areas later, so you have to retread old areas to reactivate the switch and open the right door (still on a timer) and do this while running past enemies and hopefully going the right direction, with no real visual clues or references? Either you grew up playing old school dungeon crawlers and you’ve drawn your own map, or you’ve bought a guide. Or googled, but back in 2006, you probably didn’t have ready access to the internet while you were playing.

On a really annoying ‘we want you to buy a guide’ note for me - Libra seems mostly useless as a skill. It allows you to see enemy data and traps in the world, which would be useful, except there’s a large swathe of enemies that are unreadable. Those would be the bosses and hunts - the powerful enemies you are most likely to want extra information on. Given that you have used resources to both learn and acquire the skill, plus the resource of time in the field to use it, it is really frustrating that it’s so useless when you really want it, and I can’t see a compelling gameplay reason for it except forcing you to use an external guide. Given that a large part of the combat is adjusting your strategy to suit the enemy you are facing, purposefully withholding the information is just forcing you to use trial and error or brute force. Or a guide.

The game thinks it's better at writing ye olde English than it is. I'm willing to chalk it up as difficulties in translation, but most of the dialogue is very stilted and formal regardless of who is speaking and what their actual background is. A third of the party are guttersnipe orphans, a third of the party are pirates and a third of the party are used to royal formalities - they should not all have the same vocabulary and manner of speaking. Similarly, the voice acting has some very weak moments that I absolutely chalk up to localisation difficulties - voice actors have to fit the dialogue to mouth flaps rather than the other way around, and they have some awful dialogue choices to work with, especially in fast-paced cutscenes.

Also, there are so many different non-human races and different human cultural backgrounds - which I love in theory - but they don't really explore anything in great detail. Either the beast races like Garrif and Viera don't want contact with humans and so give very minimal details on their culture and way of life, or they are like the Seeq and Bangaa - they integrate with humans so well that they might as well have been a human in a costume. Even the humans from vastly different places seem to not have any major differences between their ways of life, which considering a large motivation of the plot is war, you would think to see some kind of resistance or protest purely against losing their heritage or way or life. As it is, an NPC in Rabanastre is largely the same as an NPC in Archades.

There’s some really cool aesthetics in the background of Final Fantasy XII that were probably a result of Star Wars (personal hover-transports that absolutely aren’t speeders, the vehicles in Archades that don’t look at all like Coruscant or the huge dogfights between airships that definitely aren’t an action sequence from any movie franchise we can think of, no way…) but otherwise inaccessible to us as the player. Oh, you wanted control of a speeder? How about a chocobo? An airship? Uh, you can get one sometimes, if we want you to, but you don’t get to drive, and most of the time, you’re on foot, bucko. I’m not saying a little speeder chase section would have made the game amazing, but it would have been cool as all hell if we had something like the motorcycle chase sequence from FFVII to break the game up a little bit, you know?

Despite all this, I did have some kind of fun with the game. But it's definitely one where I'm brought my own fun. Like trying to work out how I would rewrite the script to make it more compelling. There are definitely seeds of something interesting, just never really explored.

Things I actually liked, in no specific order:

Balthier and Fran’s whole dynamic. I really like shady duos who have shared history, with the man as the brains and the woman as the brawn of the operation. Optional points for the woman being athletic, agile, and a woman of few words. If I had a nickle for every duo who met this standard…well, I’d have two nickles, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice. (see Roman and Neo from RWBY)

The fact that Vaan and Ashe didn’t wind up romantically entangled. Like, I was really worried that was going to be a thing. Especially as the game kept setting up ‘Ashe sees dead ex-husband’ followed immediately by ‘but anyway, here’s Vaan’. He is so young and childlike in comparison to the weight on Ashe’s shoulders, I was really squicked to think that this was a direction they might be going in.

The vierra in general - I just wish we had more of them and their culture. Just give me about 20 more cutscenes where I can appreciate tall bunny ladies who can step on me, please and thank you?

That’s about it. The team dynamic was underwhelming, to say the least, no one really bonded or connected with each other on-screen in any way the player could appreciate, they all just bounced around from plot point to plot point reacting (barely) to circumstances as they came up and never really had a proactive plan or goal.

If you did really like Final Fantasy XII, I'm actually really interested to hear why. If you read this and disagree, and want to point out things you really liked, please do. My opinion is not going to change, but it might help me appreciate an element of the game I had disregarded.