#force structure

[knifearo]

being aromantic is like. hey btw you're going to live a life that is the culmination of most of society's worst nightmares. sorry lol ✌️ but then you turn around and take a really good hard look at it and it turns out that living in that nightmare is fucking awesome and you get to wake up every day and take that fear that other people have and laugh and hold it close until it's a great joy for you instead. and being happy is a radical act that you define instead of someone else. and you're sexy as fuck that's just a fact of life i don't make the rules on that one

[redysetdare]

Soulmates are inherently amatonormative and it's so wild how many people refuse to acknowledge that and instead go around trying to "make it more inclusive" which mostly just leads to then forcing aspec characters into a amatonormative narrative.

[recurring-polynya]

Me, writing the parts of my fanfic I want to write: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! Me, trying to string those parts together into something that resembles a narrative: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

[p4nishers]

one of the most important things terry pratchett has taught me is that it's okay to be angry. no one has ever said that to me before. he taught me that anger was an engine. that you can use that anger. that it goes hand in hand with love. he taught me to never underestimate my anger, because it's one of my strongest points. he taught me genuine anger was one of the world’s great creative forces. he taught me i shouldn't be fighting my anger, but what caused it. he himself said rage underlines everything he wrote. i never heard anger talked about so openly like that before and it's freeing, i suppose, to realize you are truly, truly not alone in your rage at the world. you never were.

[storgicdealer]

thinking about how chosens and darks existence and crimes were perceived in the internet and outernet. did they become a regular occurence there or something. JUST WHAT did other sticks think about them

if the timeline of golds death combined with darks supposed destruction of the internet this is probably how king would react

[meltedmush]

With great power comes with great need to make skin creatures

HELL YEAHH

[virfujiwara]

Any The Book Of Life (2014) enjoyers here? Ramble in the tags lol Reminder that commissions are open and I'm making art for your donations and we are raising money for an AAPI charity through this zine, if you or someone you know likes Watcher, check it out!

[rinbylin]

相思梨花阵，有所耳闻。解法？ the formation of pear blossom of longing. i've heard of it. what is the way out of it? 笛家训死士，素来收钱办事。今日，我便买你这条贱命。 the di manor grooms expendable killers for money, and today, i shall buy this wretched life of yours. （... 笛盟主，若不曾投石问路，你便能安然地度过。 di mengzhu, had you not tried to find out what's ahead, you would have made it through safely.） （... 自今日起，再无笛家胁迫。天高海远，任尔等自在纵横。 from here on, the di manor is a threat no more. the world is wide and vast for you to freely roam.）

di feisheng + the copper coin | 莲花楼 mysterious lotus casebook ep. 18 / 34

[anghraine]

ngl I always find it wild to see Star Wars stuff that's like "if you think about it in terms of realistic statistics/science then..." about almost any aspect of it.

I mean, what about the Star Wars films gives the impression that this universe abides by realistic statistics, or realistic anything else? SW is broadly a fantasy epic projected onto an IMAX screen with a space background painted on it. Yeah, the planets and moons in the films almost always have improbably limited biomes and two major locations max, because narratively these locations are usually just fantasy city-states with space aesthetics.

Starships travel at the speed of plot and we simply jump past the amount of time that presumably is passing, and sort of imply the passage of that time through shifts in the character dynamics. But this passage of time cannot be analyzed with any kind of consistency because the only logic governing it is the pace of the story.

Just how long did it take the Empire to send a full contingent of forces to Dantooine, search the entire planet, find the Rebel base, and then report back to Tarkin between one scene and another? No one says and no one appears to care. How long did it take Han and Leia to reach Bespin and what exactly went on between them while Luke was, in the same time frame, going through a protracted training over multiple days at an absolute minimum? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How do giant space worms survive inside asteroids that somehow have an Earth-approximate gravitational field and I guess an atmosphere? Shhhh don't think about it. The point of the sequence is not "how does the giant space worm subsist off this random asteroid and how does it breathe and how does gravity work in this context, seriously" but that the giant worm sequence is fucking sick.

There's probably some after the fact EU justification invented by people who had nothing to do with the original writing of the space worm (or perhaps there are several mutually incompatible explanations) and I am profoundly disinterested in them. Nothing could make this even slightly realistic and it was never intended to be. Star Wars sings space shanties at scientific/mathematical realism as it sails past on a completely different ship going in the exact opposite direction.

And I do mean "sails" because while astronomy might tell us that space is unfamiliar and wild on a level we as Earthbound lifeforms can barely comprehend, Star Wars understands that space is basically an ocean, yet with stars and cool but survivable planets in it, or sometimes it's air but combined with a super cool space background so you can have early 20th century aerial combat that would make no sense in actual space conditions and doesn't need to.

"If you consider relativity, then just running the Empire would be..." General relativity does not govern the galaxy far, far away. Space magic does. I'm not sure there are even time zones.

[panvani]

@gorps I think that's a pretty reasonable response to the opening of the game and, while not the intended one, fairly obvious. It's a bit difficult to sum up what Signalis is * about * to someone who's never experienced the game (because it's very much a game you experience) but it might be good to start by saying that Signalis is a game about a truth that is too horrifying to comprehend and, to that end, tends to involve a lot of misdirection in its storytelling.

The purpose of using the trappings of East Germany is fairly obvious to me, having played the game multiple times, and it basically comes down to the game wanting to signal a dystopian setting that coincides with Germany and (as mentioned in the tags of a different post) the two aesthetic archetypes for that are East Germany and the Third Reich. Signalis did not choose this latter option for obvious reasons. Beyond aesthetics, however, the setting does not sincerely attempt to imitate East Germany or the USSR, and these aesthetics are inherently farcical, beginning with the assumption that you are dealing with a setting that is overseen by a "government" as opposed to a carceral institution or a family.

A common misinterpretation (or at least I'll confidently call it a misinterpretation) of Signalis is that it's necessarily about a society or an institution rather than an individual. Signalis is a very personal and a very individual story that encompasses a number of themes, notably the alienation of racial minorities in Germany. Yuri Stern has stated that their identity as a Malaysian-Chinese-Austrian person living in Germany affects the themes of their work, and Signalis establishes a pretty extensive library of geometric and linguistic symbols to communicate this idea.

Like I said, I don't think reading the trappings of Signalis as anti-communist is like, wrong, per se, so much as short-sighted or missing the forests for the trees. The game is much more about racist, psychiatric, and domestic violence within modern day Germany and has really no interest in commenting on the USSR or communism as a system.

[amandamadeathing]

I just felt like sharing some of my favorite Bad Disney Bitches:

[fluentisonus]

chiens-loups

[bit-odd-innit]

I made a joke tag on this post about how Nancy is genre-aware and can feel the arbitrary love triangle closing in around her but then I thought about it for a millisecond too long and— Nancy can’t shake it: The muggy, suffocating pressure prickling along her skin and cottoning up her lungs. At first it’s easy to ignore. She’s been shaking off the relentless crush of pressure in one form or another for years. They are bigger things to focus on, bigger mysteries to solve. So when she catches Dustin watching her and Steve with what she can only describe as wist she’s confused, but she lets it slide. She thinks, not without guilt, they really only spend this kind of time together when the world is ending. Maybe he’s nostalgic. It’s sweet, in a twisted, broken sort of way. She resolves to make more of an effort when this is all over, but right now everyone needs to focus on what’s important— But then she’s walking through the woods and Robin is talking about rekindling old flames that should have never been snuffed out and it jars her into a stutter step. Because what? Where did that come from? Robin wasn’t there when there was a flame, paltry and dim though it was. Steve’s always been kinder to her than she deserved, so maybe his version of events gave Robin a false sense of their compatibility. Even so, why? And why bring it up now? She can’t parse it now, so she latches to the one thing that makes hope spark in her chest: Robin calls her a friend. Robin considers her a friend. And it’s been so long since someone has earnestly, sincerely called her a friend, she basks in the warmth of it and almost lets herself forget how strange— And then Steve is smiling at her so sweetly and his eyes are shining so brightly and he’s telling her about his dream, about six kids and a Winnebago and she knows she’s meant to be charmed by it all but instead she feels like she standing at the gallows with a noose flush to her throat. When they get a brief moment of calm, she takes Eddie aside. 

“Did you tell Steve we should get back together?” He grins, lopsided and smug. “No need to thank me, when it comes to matters of the heart I am but a humble messenger—” “Why?” “Why what?”  “Why do you think Steve and I should get back together?” Eddie blinks, his smile sliding off his face, and there’s a dull flicker of confusion in his big bright eyes, as if he just found himself caught somewhere he was not meant to be. But then it vanishes and he’s back to one, beaming and bombastic as he answers, “Isn’t it obvious?” “Explain it to me.” “I—” His tongue darts out to wet his lips and his gazes bounces across her features, scanning for the answer he thinks she wants. “Its...That’s what’s supposed to happen.”   “Eddie.” She doesn’t break eye contact, keeps her voice steady, encloses her hands around his trembling fingers.  “Dig deep. Why did you tell Steve we should get back together?” The color drains from his face, his eyebrows bowing in fear. “I don’t know,” he whispers. “I don’t know why I said that. I think...” His mouth falls open, working soundlessly, and he huffs out a shaky breath. “I think I wanted to say something else? But I don’t remember...I don’t remember what I, and then that came out instead, and I don’t know why I said it I don’t know why I said it Wheeler what the fuck?” “I know.”

“I’m wanted for murder I don’t care about your relationship woes! I didn’t even know you guys dated until after you broke up, and that was what? Two years ago?” “Almost three,” she says quietly.  “Wheeler what the fuck?! Is this...?” He drops his chin to his chest and waggles his hands in a faint circle. Because they are still connected, Nancy’s hands go along for the ride. “Is this him?” “No.” A righteous fury licks its way up from her belly, fanning out across her circulatory system. The muscles in her neck strain as she clenches her jaw. “No, this is something else.”

“What’re we gonna do?” “We’re going to fix it.” “How?” “I’m rewriting our plan,” she replies. And when she sets her shoulders and straightens her spine she feels the pressure that means to crush her push in.  And she pushes back.  “I’m rewriting all of it.”

[doctor-hopper]

I'm really tempted to comb through his lines about luck and write meta on it, because even off the top of my head, looking only at DR2/Dangan Island content, it's like

His FTEs frame bad luck as being part of good luck: bad thing leads into something good enough to compensate

But he has at least one Dangan Island line where he anticipates something bad after experiencing something good

And interestingly considers nothing much happening to him to be bad luck in Dangan Island's ending, even though he had a good time, which warrants some unpacking (my current hypothesis is it's because his impending death is making him desperate to make his life meaningful, not 'waste' his remaining time)

Not all of his examples fall neatly into his luck cycle model, especially not the FTE version where the events are connected. The diagnosis and HPA admission were separate-ass events, in DI's ending he expected his convo with Hinata to go well because of the aforementioned general '''bad''' luck too, the events of chapter 5 are hard to sort into the model, some DI interactions make it sound like he just has extreme outcomes sometimes (eg. he'd win capture the flag first try every single time), etc etc.

I have a feeling at least some of the way he talks about his luck is copium, especially in his FTEs since he really had to focus on the idea of bad -> good in the killing game. But as you say, he could have been intentionally oversimplifying... and if he actually thought the cycle worked both ways, saying he lives in fear of bad things every time something good randomly happens might've veered too close to genuine vulnerability. Which he avoided (by his standards anyway- I think he lacked awareness of how bad the kidnapping + plane stories were) until the final FTE.

Either way, I definitely need to scrutinise his lines more :'D

A ton of good points! Komaeda’s luck is fascinating and nowhere near as clear-cut as he originally makes it sound. Fics where he tries to “game the system” and finally gain some sort of control over his luck are interesting—but honestly, I feel like he’s already been trying to do that for as long as he’s lived. And he exercises an impressive amount of power under those restraints! But…also.

As for anticipating something bad after experiencing something good, I do think the way Komaeda portrays the order of events is just what he tells himself and/or Hinata. In reality, good and bad luck are two sides of the same coin to him—the real important part isn’t the order, it’s that nothing good can happen without something bad happening too. Everything has a price. Luck is a zero-sum game.

(He touches on this again in 2.5 when he says there’s “a fixed amount of luck in the world” and so he’s content to suffer the bad luck for everyone else’s benefit. In the dream-world sim, the luck he experiences is apparently “ideal”, but it still has to exist. There still has to be an Omelas child of sorts. Komaeda would just rather it be himself.)

As for good being caused by bad vs. just following it, it definitely happens both ways and he’s definitely contradicted himself. Beyond that, even, there are cases in the game where it’s not totally clear what sort of cycle is involved in the luck he experiences. In 2-1, he draws the short straw simply because he wanted to. Was the bad…offscreen? Was it the killing game itself? Would “being forced to clean” actually count as bad luck even if he wanted it? Was it then followed by the good luck of finding the secret passage? People hypothesize that his luck works differently in the simulation according to his own belief, which would complicate things even more, but I’m sort of back-and-forth on that theory. There are arguably examples of luck working the way Komaeda claims it does in DR2, also—such as getting the Despair Disease the worst out of anyone thanks to his compromised immune system, but being able to discover in the hospital that Tsumiki was the culprit. ending up in the hospital but meeting a lovey-dovey nurse GONE WRONG

I’ve always read the Island Mode ending as copium myself. I do definitely think he was hoping for a chance to die meaningfully on the island, and I guess in his mind that could be bad luck, but it doesn’t really fit his model. The way he tries to nudge Hinata into agreeing it’s bad luck, the scene reads to me like he just needs to believe it’s bad luck so he can solemnly ask Hinata to be his friend. (And I think it’s notable that in the word he uses for friend here is 友達 tomodachi, which in this context could be understood as more of a personal friend—everywhere else, he’s used the word 仲間 nakama, comrades, to refer to the whole class as a unit.) And remember, being loved by someone is another way that Komaeda’s death could have meaning—so even if he didn’t end up in the climactic situation he was expecting, perhaps he’s realized there’s another way to get what he wants. :’)

But, yeah, what decides if something is good or bad luck for Komaeda though? I think even that’s not always clear to him.

I’ve heard the view that it “gives him what he immediately wants while taking away what is subconsciously valuable to him” (from TheAmityElf, I think) which is interesting, especially to play with as a writing tool, but not ultimately convincing. Some events could be loosely mapped to that pattern, but others contradict it a bit—you can’t tell me he just wanted money, and he did actively try to turn down his invitation to Hope’s Peak.

Which is now also making me think: Since the diagnoses and the invitation weren’t directly related, do you think he even connected them in his mind at first? What if he didn’t, and so he was afraid that by going to Hope’s Peak he would be invoking even more bad luck yet to come?

One more interesting dimension of his luck to think about is whether it hurts others vs. himself. In 2.5 it only hurts Komaeda, but that’s not quite the direct opposite of his real luck, because his real luck gave him cancer and dementia! However, it also does seem to be proactive in protecting him from actual death in both 2.5 and the rest of canon.

I’ll conclude this reply with this…relevant blackout poetry (blackout infographic?) I made years ago and which you suddenly reminded me of, lmao.

Silly coda: This is why Komaeda’s favorite word is eucatastrophe.

(…How lucky, then, that people say “Komaeda, eucatastrophe!” to him all the time!)

[romanceyourdemons]

dudes will say “it’s spooky how much what’s happening today mirrors the fall of rome” and the narrative they know of “the fall of rome” was invented by edward gibbon as a functional metaphor for his (a conservative upper-class englishman’s) fears about democracy and modernization

[hungwy]

the real is the empty core of the record which can play no music and cannot be reached by the needle of the record player