#give bystanders a chance to learn even if the questioner won't

[thequeenofsastiel]

People be like "It's not my job to educate you" and then wonder why no one understands their causes

[thegodthief]

An Occasional Lurker™ asked...

Which hobby would you give a try if money, materials and space were handled?

I have to pick ONE?? And does it have to be a hobby I haven't yet stuck a finger in? If we're discussing something I haven't yet tried: Blacksmithing. Which sounds more like a job than a hobby, but in the (lack of) constraints that you have given, all the blocks that keep me from even being a helper to an established blacksmith is out of the way.

Blacksmithing would tick off a lot of personally satisfying activities in one category, while also giving the option of never being overly repetitive. How can a hobby that is mostly comprised of swinging a hammer on a hot piece of metal repeatedly not repetitive? I know enough about blacksmithing to know that the art of swinging that hammer is NOT just swinging the hammer.

Where to strike. How hard to strike. How to set up a particular strike three hits back. Even if it's a set of identical knives, no one knife is going to be hammered out identical to any other.

There's the pure physical aspect of it, but there's also the art of it. There's the satisfaction of taking something useless (scraps and/or raw ingots) and making something useful out of it, even if that useful thing is only good for looking at.

But if it's a hobby that I have given a try to before, then weaving. Though any loom the size of a room is more likely to eat me instead and I will never be heard from again. Bystanders will look at me with despair, saying that I have been enchanted by the loom and forced to weave until I waste away.

Nothing of the sort. I have always held threads in my hands, and I will admit that not having the time to get back to it has been detrimental to my health.

What food or snack would you prefer on a lazy afternoon?

Ooo... Trick Question™! (First I need to remember what lazy afternoons feel like.) Can't go wrong with a bowl of baby carrots. With hot sauce. And cottage cheese dusted with season salt.

Popcorn is always a favorite, but only if I'm doing something that can exist around butter. So I won't be eating popcorn if I'm going through some books.

You know what's good? A sandwich with sliced roast beef or turkey breast, colby jack cheese, a right thick layer of spinach leaves, on wheat bread that has just enough mayo to keep the seasoning in place.

But ya know... some thin sliced ham and provolone cheese rollups are good as well. If I have to choose between prosciutto and thin ham, I'll take whichever is less salty. Besides, I'm too busy putting the prosciutto on the roast beef sandwich.

I'm hungry, now, dammit.

Reader's choice, what topic could you happily talk about at length?

Keri.exe is taking too long to respond. Close or wait?

Uh...

WHICH ONE?!

My head is a Trivial Pursuit wheel of chance. I know a little about a lot of things, and I know enough to pretend I can connect the dots, and if the topic is a work of fiction, I will spin fanon tales on the spot about certain characters and how they interact in AUs.

One thing I have learned the hard way, is that there is a big difference between typing a few dozen thousand words and having a sit with a friend and talking their ears off even if the recipient of both actions is the same person.

When I go on a rant in DMs, my first message is "Wall of Words in progress, please come back later.", because I know I am going to plow so many words that Merriam-Webster should give me a commission for selling a dictionary to the recipient. But not every topic that is suited for DMs is suited for public posting nor is suited for a phone call nor is suited for a chat at a café.

What topic that I could happily talk about at length is completely dependent on who is the audience and how much time am I expected to fill (or meet).

I'm treating this question in bad faith, and I apologize, but as the answer is public I find myself wary of my phrasing. There is a terrible tendency on the Internet to treat everyone that is posting about anything is an Expert™ in the topic discussed. And many of the topics that I would gladly indulge in private DMs or a public meeting place are topics that I will NOT even comment on in a public post.

And that's bad.

And that's my problem.

And that's something I need to break myself of.

After all, someone told me recently that there is neither comfort nor safety in cowardice, and yes, I am a coward. I am afraid of being targeted, of being hurt, of saying something that will offend the people I look up to and they abandon me for it.

And funny how little things become the lock-pin that holds larger things in place.

I also think that I don't post like I used to because that same Internet tendency that views anyone with an opinion as an Expert™ also makes it hard to hold conversations about a topic. Posts become hills to die on and fortifications to defend. Having an opinion on the Internet is an act of war.

Or so I perceive the topic of topics on the Internet.

Perhaps my perception is incorrect.

Perhaps I'm typing furiously against clouds.

Or perhaps I'm going on at length about nothing.

Who knows.

:D

[comicaurora]

the castlevania mentions from the past couple days got me wondering—did you ever get to share that Trevor-Dracula foils rant you mentioned at the end of the villainous scene video?

I haven't had an outlet for it yet, but I think it's a pretty self-explanatory angle of analysis. Trevor and Dracula have a list of similarities a mile long which only serves to highlight their single point of contrast: whether they protect humanity or try to slaughter them all. With nearly identical motivations and tragic backstories, each one chooses the opposite approach to the other.

Both of them:

Are highly educated and hypercompetent dudes specifically in the field of vampire stuff, and have access to a ton of information that's been forgotten by the outside world.

Love a highly educated woman seen as a heretic by the church

Lose the person/people they care most about when they're put to the torch by the church despite only wanting to help them

Conclude that humanity are a bunch of absolute ungrateful bastards

Repeatedly reaffirm this conclusion and are disappointed by the ignorance and petty cruelty of ordinary, scared humans

Hold "innocent bystanders" accountable for not standing up against the terrible things being done around them

Enter the story crushingly depressed and self-destructing

Hold an ultimately deeply pessimistic worldview

Trevor at one point even expresses sympathy to Dracula when he learns that the church killed Dracula's wife. He understands Dracula's motivation, even agrees with it - but he refuses to allow Dracula to murder all of humanity just because he's hurting.

Their key points of contrast that make them good foils are:

Dracula is the ultimate vampire, Trevor is the last son of a lineage of vampire hunters (natch)

Though Trevor thinks about as poorly of humanity in general as Dracula does, he doesn't believe any of them deserve to die, and despite not particularly liking any of them will still go out of his way to save them because it's the right thing to do.

Dracula declares all of humanity complicit in Lisa's death because "any one of them could've stood up and said 'no, we won't behave like animals anymore!" and holds the attitude that, since none of them stopped her senseless death, there are no innocents anymore. Trevor, in turn, actively rallies a crowd of those "innocent bystanders" to do the right thing, targeting only the one actually malicious bad guy and telling him "you would've made murderers out of these people", actively spelling out to the bystanders what they would be made complicit in and giving them the chance to do the right thing. And, when given the chance, they do the right thing, demonstrating that Trevor's worldview is more accurate than Dracula's, and if nothing else that humanity always deserves a chance to be better.

Sometimes one of the best ways to make character foils is to make them very similar and then let them choose different paths - a classic "not so different" situation. In this case, when faced with the yes or no question "does all of humanity deserve to die for what they did to you and your loved ones," Dracula and Trevor bubbled in opposite answers.