#history repeats itself (retconned)

[something-in-your-walls]

ok I haven’t posted much recently but here’s a silly guy for you!!!

[something-in-your-walls]

guys im sorry for being obnoxious abt them but ASK ME ABT MY HRI GUYS WAHHHH

oc asks: not-so-nice edition

alone: How does your OC deal with loneliness? Have they ever been completely alone before? How do they act when there's no one around to see them?

betrayal: Has your OC ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust? Has your OC ever betrayed someone who trusted them?

bound: Has your OC ever been imprisoned or captured? What happened? How did they get out? Did the experience leave any scars?

break: What would cause your OC to break down completely? What do they look like when that happens? Has anyone ever seen them at their lowest?

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

failure: What's your OC's greatest failure? Have they been able to move past it? Does anyone else know about it?

fear: What is your OC's greatest fear? What do they do when confronted with it? Are they open with their fear, or do they hide it away?

future: What's the worst possible future for your OC? Are they taking steps to avoid that outcome? Are they even aware it's a possibility?

ghost: Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?

guilt: What is your OC guilty about? How do they handle their guilt? Do they try to avoid guilt, or do they accept it?

hate: What does your OC hate? Why? How do they act towards the object of their hatred?

heartbreak: Have they ever had a relationship that ended badly? Experienced some other kind of heartbreak? What happened?

hide: What does your OC hide? Why do they hide it?

hunt: Who or what is your OC hunted by? A person, a feeling, a past mistake? Is your OC able to let their guard down, or are they constantly alert?

mask: Does your OC wear a mask, literally or figuratively? What goes on beneath it? Is there anyone in their life who gets to see who they are under the mask?

midnight: What keeps your OC up at night? Do they have nightmares? Fears? Anxieties? What do they do in the small hours of the morning when they should be sleeping?

mistake: What's the worst mistake your OC ever made? What led to them making it? Have they been able to fix it? How have they moved on?

monster: Is your OC monstrous in any way? Is there something that makes them monstrous? Are they aware of their own monstrosity? Do they accept it or reject it?

nightmare: What does your OC have nightmares about? How do they deal with their nightmares? Do they tell people, or keep it to themself?

pain: What's the worst pain your OC has ever felt? Do they have a high pain tolerance?

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them?

skin: How comfortable is your OC in their skin? Do they grapple with anything that lives inside them—a beast, a curse, a failure, a monster? How do they face the smallest, weakest, most horrible version of themself? Are they able to acknowledge it at all?

torture: Has your OC ever been tortured? Would your OC ever torture someone else?

wound: How does your OC handle being wounded? Are their wounds mostly physical? Mental? Emotional? What's the worst wound your OC has ever experienced?

[sgiandubh]

The sound of silence

With the end of August already in sight - somebody, please, tell me where did this botched summer go, all of a sudden? -, a somewhat different landscape is slowly emerging, on the S&C front.

Dare we hope? The new normal seems to be a mix of latergrams, sibylline tweets, ultra-muted innuendo (most of it the result of a couple of pundits' sterile speculations on meagre hints dropped on purpose) and secondary (even third-circle) players being conveniently called to the rescue. A low budget, almost homemade solution to keep the prayer wheels of this fandom spinning. A fandom both of these two know, by now, like the back of their hands.

For months and months in a row, I tried to understand something that puzzled me constantly: not the messages being ventilated in here, but their circuit and lifespan, if you want. For what is worth, the rinse and repeat image is fine in my book, but in no way comprehensive, nor intellectually satisfying. And then, a couple of weeks ago, I started to suddenly figure it out.

I am not going to insult you with savant jargon or Venn diagrams, rest assured. However, I need some arrows. I called it the 4 R Circuit and here we go:

(an information is being) Released (via Anons or DMs exclusively: it's never sheer luck, that is a bloody lie and a poor one, at it) -> (it then prompts a couple different) Reactions -> (followed by an almost immediate) Retcon (by the other side of this very antagonistic fandom) -> (in response, an old information is being) Recycled (thus effectively keeping the chatter alive, but re-oriented until ) -> (a new or old/new information is being) Released

Historically, the lifespan of this news cycle was never shorter than 24, but seldom (if ever) longer than 72 hours. This summer is a resolute break off this pattern, but old habits die hard: the collective attention span has been also conditioned accordingly.

And how could it be otherwise? Because neither of them had any consistent A-list level gossip history, the emerging fandom had to resume itself to their social media accounts, for a start. And boy, were we copiously spoiled, with banter and innuendo and double-entendre galore, and then with voluble Anons being simultaneously directed to the main players of all the factions. I bet it was elating. I am sure it was also great fun: a merry, sunny age of innocence. Until it wasn't and the ugly manipulative streak began its inglorious march in here. The thirst grew, and so did the stakes. Pictures, pictures or it did not happen. And when we got them, we started to immediately diss and hiss and hum and drum. In the Real World (you know, out there, where we all go every morning and are civilized, amiable people), this kind of behavior would be more than uncanny: it would be uncalled for and drastically sanctioned as such. But, I digress.

The result of this disco inferno by design is a pattern of reactivity I have never seen in my entire life. Nano-inquisitors immediately spring out of their chairs once you dare write something: why did you say that? how dare you speak your mind, you are supposed to be a stupid, stupid shipper? In the meantime, almost nobody bothers connecting the dots, finding a solid background for arguments, placing facts or speculation in a logical context. It's frowned upon. Yet, the whole experience would be way more enjoyable, if instead on focusing on idiotic and obviously doctored details, we could bring some perspective to all this hubbub.

Last case in point, this freshly baked imbecility:

We all know who the fuck Brave Heart is: the kilt obsessed, once Mightiest Troll of Mordor. The one who invented by herself the grotesque story of the Hôtel Costes Rash sightings, last April, via Anons written in painful English. Also, the one who spun, based on a friendly snap at a sportive event, the Ellenwood Innuendo, promptly ditched - it didn't stick well enough- now reactivated. A sample:

Calling all stations: there is no side exit at the Hôtel Costes' restaurant, you fool, who's been to Paris as often as I went to Oahu, which is to say never. There is a back exit, through the kitchen, madam: next time, do your damn homework properly! Unlike you, I often went there (I preferred other, less nouveau riche playgrounds, that being said), back in 1996-2002, when it still was the boldest celeb' spotting venue in town. Not anymore. And who in their right mind would bring luggage or shopping bags in a very peculiarly laid-out French restaurant, without immediately taking the risk of being a conversation stopper, a bull (heh) in a china shop?

The "have seen it with my own eyes" gave you away, this time. A classical, by the book way to spin a cheap lie.

Also, C's witty latergram, via a tertiary player. I am sure (and I will film myself eating my socks live, if proven wrong) that back in Mordor someone already came with the agit-prop retcon: "it's irrelevant when the picture was taken".

It is very relevant. July 31. One day before August 1st: I always admired her humor. But who would take the time to tell 1+1= 2?

If I could gift this fandom anything, let it be this: context is always important. Manipulation starts exactly when you stop questioning and let your brain live the 72 hours news cycle.

The only real sound of this August, on the S&C front, is the sound of silence.

I rest my case.

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV S2 Predictions: Eternity In A Box (Spoilers for Blood Communion)

In Ep3 I was freaking out over the parallels b/t vampires running their fingers thru Louis' hair as he thinks he (& Claudia) are gonna die.

In the movie's version of The Trial, Santiago condemns Louis to solitary confinement:

"Eternity in a box. Walled in a dungeon. Your only company will be your screams."

And I'm convinced the Theatre's gonna bury Louis alive.

TBF, I could be WAY off; but I was thinking abt how the scene went in the movie: the Theatre locked Louis in an iron coffin and buried him underground in the walls of Theatre, and how Mr. I Could Not Prevent It waited until way later to come in and literally dig Louis back up.

Hatred as a Box: Buried Alive

Both are HORRIBLE ways for vampires to "die." Compared to going out by fire it's a light sentence, sure, until you consider the LORE.

Iron + vampires = no bueno. (The same applies to witches & fae.)

Initially, AR's vampires weren't subject to traditional wards like silver, iron, crosses, garlic, etc. The Theatre coffin was wooden, just sealed with iron locks. But magic DOES have a strong effect on vamps, as highlighted in Merrick.

In TVA Armand describes his kidnapping by the Children of Satan:

In Blood Communion, AR specifically retconned iron in 2 notable instances. Cyril bound Baudwin in iron pickets ripped from a wrought-iron fence:

And most infamously: Rhosh's kidnap of Gabrielle, Marius, & Louis:

(I pray to GOD that AMC gets this far, it's one of my fave AR books.)

I can't tell if the coffin AMC!Lou's in is iron or wood, but if he's stuffed in the Wet Room's morgue-like "burial vaults," that's definitely metal, if not steel/iron. Which is such a clever modern update to coffins. 👌

Then there's the pebbles all over Louis. Nothing much here, except that they're made of stone, and I was reminded of the hardening/crystalizing process of AR's vampires, as they age & become more & more stone-like as their luracastria hardens over time.

The stone hardening of a vampire =/= Death, but rather SLEEP; as exemplified with Akasha & Enkil--the 2 oldest vamps, who look/feel like statues. (The QotD movie took this too literally with Maharet.)

But yeah, I like the visual poetry of Lou in a coffin full of stone pebbles, essentially put to sleep by Santiago for eternity in a box; which is not unlike too what Rhosh would end up doing to him in BC.

Love as a Box: A Prized Treasure

The imagery of coffins & the theme of Louis spending eternity in a box further made me think abt Louis' (toxic) romantic relationships.

I've spoken ad nauseum abt Loustat, so I wanna focus more on Loumand here. Cuz Armand's love of Lou seems to contradict his tendency to wait for catastrophe to strike b4 he "rescues" Lou from horrible situations that could've been avoided had Armand made his move a lot sooner. (Unkind & ungracious, I know, but I'm on a tangent here.)

We see this with the Theatre, as Armand lets the coven slowly descend upon Louis & Claudia, knowing they're in danger but wanting Claudia out of the picture before he extracts Louis.

We're seeing it in Dubai, as Louis' broken "in pieces for the privilege of putting them back together again," like jigsaw pieces kept in a box. (Not NEFARIOUSLY, but Louis does speak about "pieces of himself" that he's lost/forgotten. And he asks Armand's permission to see Claudia's diaries? Which tells me that Coven Master Armand's ALWAYS held significant sway over Louis' life in their household.

And I suspect that we'll see it again if AMC pulls a Merrick on us, and swaps out Merrick & David for Armand & Lestat (a la AR's Tulane drafts), when Louis puts his own coffin in the sun and burns alive.

Cuz this is all just history repeating itself. We've seen this dynamic in Lou's life w/ Les. As his 2 great romantic loves, Les & Armand are similar & different. Neither of them's healthy for Lou, but they genuinely love him in their own effed up way. But Claudia's still right: BOTH of them keep Lou in a box.

Louis of Troy: Venus de Milo

Let's think for a sec abt the Venus de Milo we saw at the end of Ep1:

At the time I was thinking: why did AMC pick that statue? Sure, it's famous & iconic and is at the Louvre in Paris. But I stuck a pin it it.

Loumand visits an art museum in Ep4, and we can probably assume it'll have something to do with Armand's career as an art thief/broker.

During WWII all kinds of buildings got looted & bombed up, and museums had to literally bury their priceless art in boxes/crates in the dirt in order to keep them safe from the Nazis and people who wanted to steal/destroy the priceless statues.

Which is ironic, cuz a lot of discovered art was excavated/dug up; people exhuming ancient statues out of the dark earth, into the light of a new era--like a vampire. (Venus de Milo was dug up too.)

Supposedly, VdM depicts the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, holding the Apple of Discord in her hand (which was found broken off next to the statue). The Apple of Discord was the prize given to Aphrodite during the Judgement of Paris, a beauty pageant that caused Paris to run off with (the already married) Helen of Troy/Sparta & started the Trojan War. Herodotus, the "Father of History," said the West (Greeks/Europeans) vs the East (Asians/Africans) were always fighting cuz people kept stealing e/o's brides. 😂 Women were chattel just like animals in antiquity, so bride raids & cattle raids were typical catalysts for numerous mythic & historic conflicts.

Typical xenophobic fodder for racist miscegenation laws, ofc, but vampire literature eats this trope up, thanks to Dracula. AR's books do this over & over--culminating in Rhosh's infamous rape/capture of Gabrielle, Louis & Marius in BC. And AMC's emphasis on interracial/multicultural relationships inevitably draws comparisons, too.

Naturally, I'm thinking about how Troy burned over Helen; and the Theatre burned over Claudia (& Madeleine); and the Chateau burned over Gabrielle/Louis/Marius.

But I'm also thinking about how the first time Akasha & Enkil moved in 1000+ years, it was cuz Akasha allowed Lestat to drink from her, and Enkil was so mad that he got up and nearly curbstomped Lestat to mush b4 Marius wrestled Enkil off of him. 🤣

The victim/woman inevitably gets blamed, from Helen to Akasha, and ofc Louis; but it still tracks that entire wars get launched purely over love/sex--another form of treasure/money/property/status.

And I can't help but wonder how much AMC will or won't lean into the possibility that Lou's being held captive in the Dubai penthouse by Armand--NOT necessarily by force, but rather by...compliance; COMPLICIT--and that their relationship is a huge catastrophe that Lestat will inevitably have to "rescue" Louis from like some damsel in distress, like he had to do with Nicki. Or if Lou will somehow rescue himself and NOT pull a Merrick after all. 👀

And that (finally) brings me to my final point.

Safety as a Box: Louis' "coffin"

When Daniel asked Lou where his coffin was, Lou told Dan the entire Dubai penthouse was his coffin. Thanks to Armand's UV-light-controlled iPad, the vamps can walk safely in gold-warm sunlight.

But the penthouse still radiates CHILL. They're in the middle of a desert, but Daniel's constantly in a cardigan, Louis' often dressed in hoodies, Armand even wears an actual coat--it looks cold. 🙁 The sunlight's filtered/diluted; it can't warm anybody--human or vamp.

As opposed to the natural lighting at 1132, coming not from the windows (which are always carefully closed & curtained), but from the fireplaces--seemingly ALWAYS roaring by Loustat's coffins in the Coffin Room, and sofas in the parlor (there's another one across from their bed, too). 1132 exudes warmth; the florals & earthtones adding to the tropical NOLA vibe--there's peacocks on their wallpapers ffs.

Loustat's townhouse emulates a wild & free Savage Garden, but the vampires sleep in extremely close quarters in their coffins--even doubling up after Lou breaks Les.' Is it confining? Or intimate?

I have to wonder if, in Louis' efforts to take Claudia's words to heart, and not be confined in a "small box" anymore, Lou insisted on not sharing a coffin with his 2nd husband. Instead, they sleep in a HUGE king-sized bed, with plenty of space (at the price of less intimacy). But Louis hilariously STILL sleeps like a corpse vampire in a coffin, arms/hands folded across his chest! XD

And as spacious as Louis' new bed is, he's sleeping in a literal JAIL CELL; an utterly inorganic crypt-looking edifice of strange shapes, where the open plan does nothing to distract from the mental patient aura of the sunken bed & padded ceiling & metal (iron? 👀) cage bars. Is it for Louis' reluctant safety? Or for Louis' elusive sanity?

Pick Your Poison

So this is my long-winded way of saying: Lou's BEEN doomed to spend eternity in a box. It's just that that box is shaped & defined by the love his 2 control-freak toxic AF husbands have for him:

Lestat is clingy and heavy-handed, and 1132 is more cramped/crowded, but more warm & intimate. It's a contained wilderness/Savage Garden in miniature; the seraglio crawling with mistresses (Antoinette) & soldiers picked for an orgy; fit for a pimp--where Louis himself is paranoiacally caged like a prized slave/housewife.

Armand is more distant/mature (internally desperate) and enabling, and the Dubai penthouse is more spacious/open-planned, cold and foreboding; a locked off tower in the sky. It's a glorified jail cell not even trying to disguise its bars; full of around-the clock staff & handlers & nursemaids/doctors (Fareed)--where Louis is jealously guarded like an in-house mental patient kept in an asylum.

[untamedcourage]

i was going to ask if you haven't seen all the shit falling from the sky but i guess if you aren't in hyrule you wouldn't have

there is a whole civilization up there. or uh. the ruins of one anyway. old zonai stuff. i think it must have all been part of hyrule at one point and got lifted into the sky somehow? but i don't really know for sure so for now that is just a theory

yikes though. about the apocalpyse things not the warp songs the warp songs sound cool. i mean i hardly use the warp function of the purah pad anyway but the ability to just go wherever is really neat but those are restricted only to hyrule so to go like other places is even neater

i mean i guess you are right in this kind of situation all i really can do is joke about it huh? joke and fight. those are my coping mechanisms

the only link? yes? why would there be more mes? i think one me is all hyrule can handle honestly

yeah you didn't. hi quin. it's fine i am also known for being stupid and confusing

You got shit in the sky going on? Maybe I should tell my brother to check on that shit.

I am! I use warp songs to go all over the place. Including other worlds and times, apparently. Sometimes the places I end up are pretty nice, like the current world. Sometimes it's worse. Significantly worse. I've been through four separate end-of-world events.

Joking about it can help you cope with it. It's how I view it, anyways. Ain't like anybody can exactly blame you for it. As for the surprise naps, I definitely don't blame you for being nervous about that one.

Oh no, buddy. Are you the only one there? That shit sounds lonely. I have been to the founding of Hyrule and it's been around for a stupid long time, okay. There's been a lot of Links in a lot of times.

I may have just realized I haven't introduced myself yet, and I am. Very sorry about that. I'm still re-learning how to people. My name is Quin. Half-Sheikah. I do a lot of really stupid, confusing stuff, so feel free to point at whatever topic and go 'hey, what the fuck' and I can try to explain better.

[rei-ismyname]

From The Ashes: X-Men #5 Review

Spoilers, obviously.

A Journey to the Centre of the Mind Issue

Mambo number 5 is about as close to a bottle episode as it gets in comics, so the main question is 'does it succeed at that?' Cyclops appears briefly at the beginning and end, but he's not a main character per se. The focus is on Kwannon/Psylocke and Quentin Quire - two characters with little, if any history.

Let's assume this white lady is Kwannon, GRRR

It's nice to see Kwannon and Greycrow are still together, though he used to be a lot more attractive. I'm not talking about the weight he's gained, that's great. His facial structure is off - he looks like Kraven the Hunter. I don't think the art style is doing him any favours. They're having the same conversation they've always had so the Kwannon focus is off to a boring start. There's nothing here we haven't heard before, and she's not talking like a real person. Very writerly, like someone who's read the script and is telling us their blunt themes. Trauma stays with you and repeats itself over and over, but unless you're going laser focused on the subject you want to give us something new.

Okay that's pretty funny

Aside from that threat and Quentin saying 'kicks', nothing new here either. 20 pages is a very limited amount of space - I don't think this is the issue for using three of them to set up a smash cut joke. I'll come back to this intro. This mission is the reason these two weren't available last issue. A psychic rescue of Ben Liu, the dude they rescued in #2 and argued with Agent Lundqvist over in #3. He's in a coma and Cyclops tells them not to take their arguing into his head.

There's the 'aliens' he was projecting in #2, and Quentin thinks something is off. Kwannon is right, people usually use sign language and projection during psychic rescues/surgery. He disagrees, of course. The imagery is interesting, but again I feel like we're not learning anything new. I'd expect act 2 here to be more dense - it's a hyperfocused issue but the content is light so far.

Yes, he was experimented on. See what I mean? The art is showing the most blatant 'torturous experimentation by humans' imagery possible - is the most interesting dialogue possible to have them plainly state that? Or to have Kwannon just say she can't see something? This type of mission is an archetype at this point, so we've seen it done well before. Not just in comics either, this is a cartoon/sci-fi staple. People understand the premise, especially if you're economical in setting it up. I think it's a miscalculation to treat the new readers they're trying to hook like they need their hands held. Anyway, there's an entity of some sort - a psychic jack-in-the-box who looks and talks a lot like Cassandra Nova.

Except it straight up tells them who did the experimenting. Great security system lol, or maybe one that assumes they won't be able to tell anyone. 3K sound like overly elaborate dumbasses.

It goes straight for the jugular trauma. Quentin's fear of abandonment name checking his parents (who he accidentally killed, are we retconning that or is this his adopted parents? Probably the latter.) Also Wolverine and Phoebe, which are nice to see acknowledged as important relationships. And of course Sabertooth, who beheaded him and carried it round in a jar, using him as a tool to hurt his friends. It's both very effective and stuff he's mostly dealt with already. Maybe that's why it doesn't stop him for long. No mention of Idie, his oldest friend who's not very impressed with him? No mention of his guilt from X-Force war crimes or the hundreds of times he died? No mention of Krakoa, the loss every mutant should be feeling? Of course not.

Kwannon sees John Greycrow telling her she's wrong and killing himself, and that's it. She has wayyyy more hectic trauma than this so maybe it's fear or insecurity. Either way it feels very small - I love Greycrow and them together but she's a lot more than the relationship. She had a daughter who died, she was bodyjacked for decades, she's been terrorised by Sinister. This feels more like Greycrow's issues than hers. If this is followed up with them being super codependent then fine, it's worth the page space. Right now it feels like Quentin is the main character and Kwannon is a paper cutout. 'I can't' are words I'd expect from Quentin, but Kwannon keeps saying them this issue. If you're not doing it properly, maybe leave her outside as the anchor or something? Focus on Quentin so we get a deeper look under his hood, setup his arc for this run. Psylocke has a solo book coming after all, plenty of time to get to know her again.

Also, is that how Black Bug rooms work? The usage feels odd to me but I'm being hypercritical here. Weigh in if you know.

Quentin hears a psychic gunshot and snaps out of it. That was easy! Cassandra Nova must be losing her touch. I guess it's not the real her anyway, just an echo. Maybe she's not up to her old tricks and letting them know the name of the enemy was intentional. I doubt it, but we'll see. They use Quentin's Omega power and Psylocke's finesse on a psychic fastball special. His echoing of her threat to him as support is a serviceable callback, but it foregrounds Quentin again. Simultaneously too much and not enough, though at least it justifies her presence on this mission.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

Is it just me or is that a shitload of blood on the ground? This is the last page, directly following the one I showed above it. Here's what we learned

- Benny Boy is awake.

- 3K are responsible for the adult X-Gene activations.

- On baseline humans, which might recontextualise a thing or two.

- Cassandra Nova is involved.

So a bunch of dipshits dug up an old villain for the fourth time and borrowed a scheme from the Ultimate Universe. Why? How? It'd be good to get Beast or Scott's reaction to that, but there's no room. There wasn't even enough room to show how Kwannon learnt this, but it's a pretty reasonable deduction. My earlier question was 'does it succeed at being a psychic rescue issue?' Just barely. It checks all the boxes but left a lot on the shelf. It took too long to get to act 1 for Kwannon beats that weren't worth it IMO. Yeah I want to know about her but having too broad a focus meant we arguably learnt more about Greycrow than her. We learnt nothing new about Quentin. The psychic rescue was setup last issue, I think starting in media res would have freed up 5-6 pages to put some meat on those bones.

X-Men comics have a long standing tension between new and established readers. 'Every comic is somebody's first' is admirable, but the patience of established readership is finite. I don't think it succeeds well at either, to be frank, and it feels like that tension is a factor. I think at some point you just have to tell the best story possible, otherwise we're left asking 'who is this for?' That's capitalism for you, always chasing growth often at the expense of creativity.

Also, KWANNON LOOKS FUCKING WHITE. She's Japanese. Do better, FFS.

I don't really vibe with numerical ratings, so I'll just say that X-Men issue 5 is totally skippable. The information will be mentioned again and the journey wasn't executed very well. What a shame. The art is okay, consistent with every other issue of this title, except for the whitewashing. It's got a lot of choices I don't love but I suspect they come from editorial (Quent and Cyclops' ages etc.) Thanks for reading.

[dailydemonspotlight]

Since we're keeping with the theme here, how about one for Loki? A silly little guy that may have started an apocalypse and can transform into anything he wants, be it animals, genders, or animal genders? That's prime Pride Month material

Loki - Day 51 (Request)

Race: Tyrant

Alignment: Dark-Chaos

June 10th, 2024

Trickster gods are a rather common sight in most mythologies- people always love an underdog story, stories about characters who rise from the depths below and strike out their own niches through their wits and manipulation of coincidences- and this one is no exception. Commonly cited as the archetypal trickster deity, though highly debated as to his very existence, today's Demon of the Day is one of the most famous members of the Nordic pantheon, a god who needs little to no introduction- Loki. This deity appears back and forth in pop culture, no matter where you look- from Marvel movies to spotlights in podcasts, sitcoms, and video essays, it's not hard to see why he's such an infamous figure throughout. As the Æsir of chaos, a shapeshifter, and a perpetual underdog, he's a common sight in stories regarding Norse myth... but not the mythology itself.

As mentioned before in my Idun spotlight, Norse mythology is frustratingly archaic to research- there are precisely two sources to work off of, neither of which truly being primary, as almost every primary source has been lost through either the eternal game of telephone history is, actual fragmenting, or a simple inability to read runestones. As such, the only two sources most contemporary scholars have to work off of are the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, a pair of tomes who are strained, to say the least. Both collections of tales, rather infamously, have been bastardized due to the fact that their authors were both Christian, and cared little for historical accuracy- instead, they rewrote as they saw fit, giving way to frustrations such as the insertion of a 'one above all' god that was never mentioned in any actual stories and is almost purely believed by scholars to be a future retcon of capital-G God into the text. However, this issue only pervades the text in some aspects, and we can look at it as a relatively accurate collection. However, what this has to do with anything is that Loki is a... controversial topic in some areas in the scholarly world, which I'll get into later.

In the mythos surrounding Loki, he was the son of a jötunn by the name of Fárbauti and a hitherto unmentioned goddess by the name Laufey. Laufey's existence is also seen as somewhat controversial- while mentioned as a goddess, from what I can tell, she's only mentioned in reference to Loki, which could entirely mean she's only been added in the Edda's in order to explain away Loki's origins, or, in another possibility, she could exist purely on the fringes of the mythology. Either way, though, this is just the start of several reigning problems with the presence of Loki in Norse text, and one of the most glaring ones in my eyes.

An observation borrowed from Overly Sarcastic Productions' excellent video on Loki is that he is incredibly hard to research for a myriad of reasons- his name roughly translates to 'The Entangler' for a reason, as his mythology is a confusing web of contradictions and baffling ideas, even in the few sources we have to work off of. While I won't repeat her points wholesale, in short, Loki's existence is hard to even verify- it's entirely possible he was a later retcon to explain some unexplained aspects of the mythology, such as how Ragnarok would come to be. Speaking of... what the hell is the deal with Ragnarok and Loki? Aren't I good at segways?

Moving away from the debated existence of Loki, we should center on his role in the mythology from what we know from the Edda's, which is quite a bit. While Loki may be hard to research for a myriad of reasons (refer to the OSP video above), we have several confirmed sightings of this cryptic cryptid of Scandinavian stories, starting with his general role as a mixed practitioner of both being good and evil. While Loki is most well known for his role in perpetuating Ragnarok, the literal apocalypse in Norse mythology that it almost all circles around, he's not a wholly good or wholly bad figure- no, he's a wholly mischievous one. I'll save the Ragnarok talk for a future DDS, such as one on Fenrir, so we can focus on Loki in the day-to-day lives of the Æsir, which is that of being an absolute pest. As a shapeshifter, this genderfluid icon is prone to several bouts of mischief, including but not limited to:

Starting the entire bout with Útgarða-Loki,

Turning into a fly to bother the smithing dwarves,

Becoming a pregnant horse,

Eating a burning apple and becoming pregnant,

Causing the death of Balder, a major point in the start of Ragnarok,

and entering the god's banquet, crashing their party, and being an awful drunk.

Yes, the pregnancies are just... a thing. Don't ask. Overall, though, Loki served as a troublemaker in every sense of the word, stewing up chaos wherever he went. Which included the research of him. Again, as mentioned before, and to quote 20th century scholar Gabriel Turville-Petre, "More ink has been spilled on Loki than on any other figure in Norse myth. This, in itself, is enough to show how little scholars agree, and how far we are from understanding him." Even the exploits listed above are debated somewhat, and many of them don't appear in some canonicities, while others do. The hot debate regarding Loki has been smoldering for centuries, with some proposing him as the God of Fire, others proposing him to be a retcon of Lucifer himself, and still others believed him to be a trickster figure. However, the most interesting of the four popular theories to me has to be one about him possibly being a Hypostasis of Odin.

"Cool, what does that mean?" I hear you asking. Hypostasis is a hard to explain term, to say the least, but it effectively means something that exists to support something else. Think of the Holy Trinity of Christian myth- The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all support each other in simultaneously being god and not each other at the same time. In effect, this means that Loki could, theoretically, be an aspect of Odin to support his own existence- without Loki, there would be no Odin, and vice versa. This theory, first proposed by Folke Ström, however, has been hotly debated- three others also have quite a lot of credence from around the same time. While I personally find the hypostasis theory the most fascinating, the other three have several credentials as well- Jan de Vries concluded that he may be an archetypical trickster god, while Anna Birgitta Rooth came up with the idea that he was originally a spider, a storyteller, and a weaver.

Hilariously, the fourth conclusion about Loki at the time, one written by Anne Holtsmark, says that no conclusion could be drawn about Loki, making a neat little bow over this entire debacle. Fittingly for a trickster god, research into Loki and his continued existence is incredibly difficult. It's almost ironic, in a way. A common consensus now is actually quite a bit more simple- the idea that Loki is one and the same with the creator of humanity in the text, Lóðurr. The main argument in support of this lies in the idea that, in the Edda's, a set of three Æsir appear often together- Odin, Hœnir, and Loki, who each appear together in Haustlöng, Reginsmál, and a ballad by the name of Loka Táttur. The idea this theory supports is that each of the three- Loki, Odin, and Hœnir- created different aspects of humanity. Loki made the tricky and cunning side, Odin the loyal and intelligent, and Hœnir the commanding and violent. Odin and Hœnir are well marked as being creators of humanity alongside Lóðurr, and it's entirely possible, given the similar pronunciation of Loki and Lóðurr, that it was another epithet for Loki.

Overall, though, Loki is confusing, and I don't even know where to begin on this past the damn Wikipedia article, so I'm cutting this short before I get a headache. Loki is well documented, sure, but those documents are so filled with blots of ink that it makes it hard to look into. So many leads about Loki simply head in circles upon circles, up to the point one may find their own head in their ass in their research- when even the scholars whose jobs are to investigate find this topic frustrating, you know it's bad.

Now, impromptu venting out of the way, how is he represented in SMT? Honestly, I'm not a big fan of his original design- it's cool, sure, but it feels too plain and like a Dragon Ball antagonist to really stick out in my mind. However, the other interpretations throughout the series stick the landing on this tricky trickster far better.

My personal favorite has to be the Soul Hackers design, but Persona 5's is far from bad either- Akechi's Loki looks demonic and cruel, while the Soul Hackers Loki looks far more tricky and conniving, painting well into his role as, well, a trickster! The long blonde hair and bat-like wings make him intimidating and mysterious looking all the same, plus I'm just a sucker for blue and yellow. Mostly appearing as a magic attacker, befitting of his role in the mythology as a tricky shapeshifter, he's a definite favorite of many in gameplay.

[ravenkinnie]

As nice as it might be for angst potential, felica(?) being besties with vander & silco feels soo…. idk. like it just comes out of nowhere? Idk if i’d quite call it a retcon, per say, but it definitely doesn’t… make too much sense. I thought her death supposed to be a “yeah this wasn’t worth it we lost way too many people trying this” thing for vander. Nope! Very Close friend who’s daughter he literally named is now dead & That was apparently the catalyst for him trying to kill silco!

Like Hello??? So you’re tellin me silco Wouldn’t know exactly who’s kids vander took in??? He was standing right over her corpse??? Even Assuming he Did know, then he was perfectly okay with attempting to murder his dead friend’s children? Who he apparently promised to make zaun a reality For Them? Feels like a “btw silco was a Bad Guy, in case you forgot.” reminder. Like… Okaaaaay…. lol…. I guess he Did somehow know exactly where to find Vi when she came back but… Seriously?

Only way i can make any sense of this is if they’re Attempting to do some sort of “history repeating itself in different ways” bc The Arcane(?) is basically a… cosmic horror entity that has its own will & pulls the strings of reality like puppets to entertain itself or something. (At least, i kinda got that implication from viktor’s dialogue & episode 6’s title) But even If that’s what they’re going for it’s… Very Messy & poorly executed. It’s giving george lucas levels of “it’s all connected.”

it's just like. I mean I don't think it's wrong, everyone in undercity seems to at least know of each other so it doesn't feel wrong but it's like. well did we need it, like did it add anything? not that I want to remove felicias accomplishment of birthing jinx but we have 9 hours to wrap up all this shit we do not need that screen time to be spent on a flashback with two characters who have been dead longer than they've been on the screen. but it mostly just comes down to me not believing we need more information about vander and silcos divorce like their beef did its story function, I would leave that backstory for the future if we wanna sell something new jsjsjsk I bet you could get a one shot mini comic out of this and maybe that's the true intention

it wasn't even necessary to explain how he knew where vis childhood home would be because we already knew that shimmer guy that viktor recruited into scientology snitched on her to silco so we could have assumed he would just lead him there

I think if the arcane was intentionally like a cosmic entity that introduces endless patterns that you can't escape, it would have been a concept that is more interesting and difficult to execute than you can expect from the last 3 episodes jsjsjsk maybe they do want to include this layer there but I think it's just clunky writing, they are just doing this cycles of violence thing way too on the nose I mean how many fucking times can we kill or maim vander

I will also say!! idk how their current concept of the arcane connects to league yet because it feels like an entity that encapsulates all of runeterra should probably be very pivotal when you consider any champion or piece of lore that connects to the void. just because having a foreign predatory cosmic entity within the ssme world seems like it would piss off the current cosmic entity, how many can you fucking have?? I don't even like when people have the same name as me

[something-in-your-walls]

should i post my (VERY in progress) Gaylord and Krupp playlist or should i ignore the voices and go die in a ditch

[intrepid-fictioneer-7]

"Historical Civilization Cohabitation", for lack of a better term, has always been an obsession of mine.

I don't mean fantasies where the cultures and realms are inspired by historical ones, like in Warhammer Fantasy. I mean a story where a strange (frequently artificial or supernatural) event forces different "great"™ civilizations that rarely or never interacted, as they were separated by great distances or stretches of time, to be stuck together in a new environment where they are neighbors, and the clashes that ensue.

An example of this is For Honor. After a Cataclysm in the 10th-11th centuries that drastically altered the planet's geography and destroyed countless civilizations, three nations consisting of knights, Vikings, and samurai arrived at a new land and compete for its resources by warring against each other, up until what would be present-day for us. It explicitly takes place on our Earth after a point-of-divergence, so these are actual European knights, Norse raiders, and Japanese samurai (who came west after Japan sunk). Although For Honor, being a live-service multiplayer game, has somewhat of an inconsistent lore subject to retcons that is more beholden to what will be interesting for the game than what makes sense. For example, it went from somewhat grounded to magic being real now. Other factions from historical culture have since arrived in the setting, some of which make some sense (a group from ancient China, Scottish highlanders, Arabian warriors, Aztec jaguar warriors who sailed east, Asian pirates similar to wokou and with firearms, etc.) and others that are just straight up impossible (apparently, both the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt were still alive before the Cataclysm hit them). Another example of Historical Civilization Cohabitation is Horizon in the Middle of Nowhere, whose map I posted months ago. The gist is that a science fantasy posthuman civilization (basically elves, dragons, magic, etc. but with added scifi nonsense) recreates world history like a giant historical reenactment experiment, hoping that by retracing their steps they rediscover space/dimensional flight and return to the heavens/space (it is deliberately unclear if actual outer space or actual heaven is meant) they fell down from. They are stuck on the Japanese islands to do it, as the Earth had become mostly uninhabitable at this point, so the archipelago is treated like the "world" in miniature. It's a gonzo series, though it has a lot of, um, sus element in both the plot and the worldbuilding.

The tabletop role-playing game Banestorm is somewhat close to what I mean, but a bit of a different example. It's a setting in which Christians and Muslims from around the First Crusade were transported to a fantasy planet by a botched spell, and now in what would be our modern-day, humans are the dominant species over native elves, dwarves, and orcs as well as fellow transposed races such as hobbits and goblins, and many of these species have converted to either Christianity and Islam. It's really peculiar, but the civilizations there are mostly the medieval Christian and Islamic worlds. There is a land of pagan tribes and a realm created by transported Asian populations, but the pagan savage land is boring and nonsensical, while the Asian realm (named "Sahud") is has aged so poorly it's embarrassing.

But my fascination with this trope started with an old book from my childhood:

For some reason, world history has actually operated in successive cycles, with the same civilizations rising and falling again, in the same process, from the dinosaurs to mankind nuking itself while fighting its robots. While this was happening, the continents continued to drift until they rejoined once again into a super-continent, the Atoll of Zoombira. And the third time history repeated, the civilization found themselves next to each other.

It was not high literature, if you couldn't tell by the title and the goofy map. And not just that, but revisiting it showed really amateurish writing, especially compared to other YA books at the time.

But the setting, of multiple civilizations on a new Pangea separated by walls to stop a literal world war, always stayed stuck in my mind like mold, because of the basic concept but also because of the numerous things it didn't do. The original series never explain why history repeated 3 times, leave much of the history of the nations of Zoombira (just the worse names) blank save for specific plot relevant thing, nevermind the state of the place before they raised their walls. You would think this cyclic history would be something important or a cycle to break or something when it always ends with human extinction. And there is also a fair number of "great"™ civilizations present, but not others for some reason: why no ancient China? Persia? Arabs? Mongols? Incas? Sub-Saharan Africa? North America? And the mechanics of "Jurassium" are outright bizarre, like who built the walls keeping the dinosaurs in and why haven't some of the species spread across the continents instead? Jurassium also has cavemen cohabiting with dinosaurs, and the idea of Paleolithic or Neolithic humans living among dinosaurs is not explored at all. There is the "modern" world in the "contrée oubliée (forgotten country)" that is basically post-apocalyptic and radioactive, which raises even further questions like why didn't they curbstomp the others, why is it still radiated if it's a new cycle (did they nuke themselves again?), and where are the robots who war start the whole end of the world.

All this wasted potential has severely rotten my brain and hasn't left me, making me desire to see more of the same or similar concepts elsewhere as seen in the examples I mention above.

And Historical Civilization Cohabitation, while a cool concept to me, is rarely executed the way I would personally want it to.

[pisscreant]

Cont from this post bc I have too much fun writing walls of text. Thank you for the question I love to Ponder this stuff

@j0ltc0la

I mean fair! I guess theoretically we can never be sure of anything that happens during de. But from what I understand from canon, it's unlikely that the book has retconned? At least to me, assuming Kurvitz intended for the end of his book to be what happens to Elysium.

I guess I haven't seen any evidence that time is mixed up *enough* to alter the path to the ultimate outcome of the book. Sure multiple in game timelines exist, but I can't see anything to imply the divergence is significant enough (changing fate-wise) to save everyone. Revachol *says* she can be saved but imo she's not infallible and other Skills and the game itself imply that the end is still coming.

Also to me, the end of the world seems to be framed as inevitable because of all the commentary on history being a series of failures, history repeating itself, ect. Also even if Revachol is somehow saved, the Pale will happen right after that anyway. I mean in the book the nuke accellerates it a little, but without the nuke the Pale is still growing regardless.

There are tiny notes of hope in de like the communist quest ending. Even in the hugely pessimistic book, there are little things like Nilsen driving the Pale back with communism. But if we still consider the book as concrete, then it never goes anywhere. It's a splash of beauty and kindness before the end.

Not saying I'm 100% right tho! I'm just going by what I see/interpret in canon.

I also think we'll never truly know, since there were supposed to be more books and games that we won't have now that the IP is stolen.

(And despite it all. I will stubbornly write/imagine stories where my boys' exploits somehow save the world. Even it it's just self-indulgent wish fulfilment. Bc I am a Softie and I can't write unhappy endings for the life of me. Every single fic I write is one where I have decided that They Can Be Saved If I Just Yearn Hard Enough.)

[gear-project]

Honestly, I hope that you continue to espouse your views and be that "cold water" for the fanbase by sticking to the facts as they are introduced in the series versus embracing people's headcanons. I've seen what happens when a fandom allows their inane, emotion-driven interpretations to run rampant and distort the context of the source material to use as their vehicle for their projections and it isn't pretty (Final Fantasy VII, Dragon Ball Z, My Hero Academia, to name a few).

At the end of the day, people are going to have their own sense of fun when it comes to a game.

Lately I've been playing games while inventing my own narrative to them (i.e. I create my own mental story as I play the game based on my own experiences). Especially games with a heavy Character Creation feature.

I don't think it's a cardinal sin to do this... just that it is "sinful" to adhere to it as the truth (even if from a personal perspective it might feel as such).

I think a lot of people have their own burdens to carry, and so they interpret the world in a way that suits them most peacefully (even if that distorts the world view of others who look upon it).

Even with Authors (i.e. the Word of God)... sometimes what they write is completely rejected by the fanbase and thrown in the trash (I've seen this with Harry Potter fans and KOF fanbase).

Is it delusional? From a realist perspective maybe, but when all you're doing is having fun and living your life to the fullest, how much harm is there in that?

People get mad at me when I reject those notions in one single game, but if the purpose of my researching in the game's narrative is to hold true to the narrative's complexity, then it's a necessary rejection.

It is not my intention to fully reject their "personal reality", but that I only want to adhere to what bears the factual sense in how a story is presented.

You normally don't have this problem when the author is forthright and direct... but we've had wishy-washy errors and mistakes for years now... and getting the story straight is a milestone in accomplishment. I could say the same for BlazBlue, but fortunately Mori had the foresight to rewrite the history of his story in a way that was easier to digest... and that in and of itself influenced how Strive was written in the years to come.

So I'm grateful for the changes and more sensible decisions being made in the present compared to the vagueness of the past.

Which is the greater evil? Plot holes? Or Retcons?

I'd be willing to put up with retcons if it meant a more cohesive storyline... but at the very least, it's just food for thought.

Let me repeat myself: I don't reject a person's world... I simply reject what doesn't make sense to assume when there is no evidence.

[sugaaz]

rewatched a few eps of zi-o and the whole “getting the riders powers means retconning their existence as riders from history” made me overthink about how their life would have gone

i have a lot of questions (?) about how emu’s life would have gone and i’m putting all my thoughts here

(read more under the cut)

so the creation of another rider means the retconning of the main rider and it’s done by erasing the source of their antagonists (idk if this was said in the show or a fan theory. it’s been years since zio and im slightly confused on the details)

anyways in that case, it would be the bugster virus that is erased from existence. so no more parad (sobs)

that would also mean the worst father kiyonaga didn’t create the bugster virus so wouldn’t have any reason to be distant from his son or sell said son to the dans to save his own skin.

and yet emu is in pediatrics even if history is rewritten. one can assume that he still had that “accident” and was saved by hinata sensei which is why he filled in his footsteps in becoming a doctor.

in the novel (the novel backstory fucked me up so bad, there’s no way i can’t not bring it up) emu mentions that the mighty action c demo was the trigger for him to walk into the road. but if there was no bugster virus in this world, kuroto would have never sent emu the demo cd. so the trigger that originally made him take that step was not present yet history repeated itself with its tragedy.

if you take it a step further, emu technically shouldn’t have been lonely that games were the only thing to keep him company. i say technically because his father “should have” been there for him. but he was still a genius gamer in the new world which means he was still obsessed with games but probably didn’t send that letter to kuroto for unknown reasons. (does that mean kiyonaga was a deadbeat father in the new world too? man emu deserves better)

to think that even in the other world emu made similar choices to walk into his reset makes me uncontrollably sad ngl. yes he survived and became the hero who saves children but no child should ever have to go through that much pain in their life (fuck you kiyonaga)

i actually forgot what point i was making with this welp. should have followed sento’s third rule

it’s definitely fascinating that people somehow make similar choices in life even if history is rewritten. also i call bs on hiiro’s line “the only thing that changed was history. my personality wouldn’t change” like you’re telling me nothing in them changed from the all the things they went through in their own world? come on

sure hiiro would definitely be in surgery in the new world. would saki be alive though? were they able to work out their relationship issues? would they be together without being separated by tragedy.

would taiga still have his license? would taiga and nico meet? actually did emu and nico go up against each other? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS YALL

kiriya i suppose would be chilling with his friend who would not be dead so good for him.

anyways this is a slice of my millions of thoughts. i might add more to it when i have any more coherent thoughts lmao.

[arcticdementor]

Anyone who predicts the future risks beclowning and humiliating himself, usually for little return. Better to offer Nostradamus-like pronouncements, susceptible to many interpretations, so you can later retcon the predictions you make. Nonetheless, the outline of the immediate future for America is clearer than most futures, because we are repeating a pattern that has occurred more than once in modern times. Yes, much is unprecedented in our current situation. Still, the general form of our coming catastrophe is plain enough. I would like to be proven wrong. But I will not be.

…

The Regime has no good moves to prevent Trump’s election. What, then, when Trump wins? Crucially, the Regime is not a unitary thing, centrally coordinated, but a set of emergent properties from competing groups. All these groups are driven to a greater or lesser degree by Left ideology, obeisance to which gives them meaning, the core human need. A common ideology often gives the appearance of coordination, but that coordination is the coordination of a school of fish. Most importantly, no action can ever be taken if action would require defying Left dogma; it would be like the fish exiting the sea onto dry land, impossible in their nature. And because the backbone of Left dogma is the wholesale denial of reality, the Left always lacks any internal correction mechanism short of total failure of the Left system. As a result, no Left regime in history has successfully reformed itself, and what will result after Trump’s victory will therefore be dictated by insane paths of thought inherent to the Left far more than by good tactics or good sense. It will be visceral and inevitable, wholly in keeping with the eternal Left project of permanent revolution.

…

Why, though? Why will this, and the further violence I outline below, be the reaction of the Regime to Trump’s victory? To answer this, we must understand history and the Left mindset. In its nature, the Left perceives that history marches ever-onward to inevitable victory. Thus, they can never accept even the perception of a rolling back of their ill-gotten gains, and therefore always resort to violence if successfully challenged in any material way. The most extreme members of the Left coalition are allowed to dictate this turn to violence, because more “moderate” members can point to no limiting principle in the permanent revolution required by Left ideology, and therefore are pulled along the greased path to violence. Almost always, however, their reach exceeds their grasp, as long as resistance arises. This suicidal tendency is the Achilles’ heel of the Left. The irony is that none of what I outline today seems necessary to achieve Left goals. The smart Regime play would be simply to allow Trump to take office, and then hobble him as they did in his first term, only more aggressively. Certainly, there is some small chance such containment would fail, and result in an existential conflict, if Trump fought back this time, in a disciplined fashion. In fact, however, the Left is more right than wrong that the actions I predict are necessary for them. The Left project, being anti-reality, always crumbles into dust, its soaring hopes of heaven on earth crashing to the ground, as the ash of the promised utopia sifts through the fingers of horrified Left acolytes. The only cures for a failing ideological project are folding one’s cards, as late-stage Communism did, or ratcheting up the revolutionary rhetoric and actions, as Maximilien Robespierre did. Either path ultimately leads to Left defeat, but this is incomprehensible to the Left view of the world, which disregards history and views Left victory as both preordained and certain to bring happiness to mankind. If not in Trump’s second term, soon enough afterwards the Left would have to take action to prevent the masses from throwing them onto the dust heap of history. It is only timing that is variable; this path was set in stone as soon as the Left fully seized America by the throat in the 1960s.

…

Still, even though insane and stupid freaks increasingly dominate the Regime, there remain some Regime members who are both immensely powerful and reasonably smart. Certainly, all are members of the Left in good standing; they could not retain their positions otherwise. They burn incense to the Left’s twin core goals of unlimited emancipation combined with forced egalitarianism, both in service of achieving utopia. This is the glue of the Regime, and for the vast majority of those within the Regime, it tells them why they exist. “We are good people, we are on the right side of history, we are making a better world.” What will these final bosses do, when street violence fails to stop Trump’s march to inauguration? It is in late November and through December that the most crucial decisions will be made, and only by the mightiest segments of the Regime—the military and intelligence hydras, and their allies in the private sector. They can see what is likely to happen if Trump becomes President. He will destroy their power, beginning with pulling the plug on NATO’s war against Russia, which they have made the sine qua non of their desired global order.

…

What will that look like? I am less confident here than in my prediction about Antifa shenanigans. It might be assassination (a danger even before the election). Certainly, these people are capable of killing inconvenient men, and have done so before (ask the shade of Jeffrey Epstein, if you can summon him). More likely, it would be a straightforward coup by military force, claiming that the election was illegitimate, stolen by “MAGA fascists and Russians,” and that the coup is necessary “to preserve democracy.” They will justify this with a combination of claiming they need to restore order because of the violence they themselves have caused, and forging “evidence” of Trump’s supposed evil plans to make himself dictator. As Edward Luttwak discussed in his classic work, Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, a coup is not a civil war. It is “a form of politics that requires guns as an aid to persuasion,” a swift and complete seizure of the mechanism of state power. A successful coup “uses parts of the state apparatus to seize the controlling levers over the rest.” This coup attempt would be simply use of military forces to try to rapidly occupy key nodes of power. (A classic recent, though failed, attempt was the attempt to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, as he was similarly strangling a dying regime, even though he did not mean to.) It would be given a veneer of legality by compromised, overawed, or intimidated judges issuing supportive decrees holding the old American forms, which if rejected by Trump would be used as further evidence of his “attack on democracy.” Such a coup would take place in a narrow window of time; it cannot stretch on more than a few days if it is to succeed. Much would also depend on whether they could seize Trump at the inception of the coup. If such a coup fails, as it likely will because of resistance outside of Left geographic centers of power, along with resistance inside the military, we will get some form of civil war, as elements of the military split their loyalties, and wildfire violence spreads. Such a war would start with sporadic violence, but would likely expand as ambitious men see their chance, score-settlers settle scores, and foreign powers, especially the Chinese, see a chance to further cripple America. Once such violence starts, it naturally tends to grow, and is very hard to stop.

���

None of this is set in stone. Trump cannot be relied upon to respond with adequate firmness to any attack on him and his office, no matter how unprecedented in America. For every action, a reaction, but not necessarily an equal and opposite reaction, and Trump is a Boomer, not a Caesar. He might just strike his tents, unable to stomach the violence of his enemies. If none of what I predict were to happen, the sad fact is that Trump would be unlikely to try to halt the Left’s gains. He did little in his first term, after all. Maybe he has learned his lesson, and maybe he will not surround himself, this time, with evil counsellors. But we will likely never find out, because Trump will not be given the chance to govern under the old system. Even if Trump were to fold, the Regime would not achieve its goals, or not for long. You cannot stuff a genie back into his bottle, and new, unexpected men will rise to overtly challenge the Regime, when the guardrails have been formally removed by shortsighted Left action.

[theory-of-art]

5.1 Gender & Art

In general, canons are considered immutable and deified to a certain extent: Oh you have to read these specific books because they are the classics; it doesn’t matter if the authors are all white, middle- to upper-class males; there’s definitely no ulterior motive to making their voice the ultimate authority and any other perspective categorized as the other. This is the wrong way to approach any canon, just like the Pirate Code in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, they’re really more guidelines. Unfortunately, because we cannot conceptualize time outside of a linear narrative format, canon generally sticks to the historical patterns which have been overwhelmingly white, mid- to high-class, and male. In order to understand the Art History Extended Universe we need to stop thinking of history as linear and objective, and we need to look at what the world’s higher-ups retconned or locked in the vault. 

For the first part, history as we currently view it in Western tradition is linear; we sort time with a beginning, middle, and an end because that’s how we view our own individual time on earth and because that is our narrative tradition. This idea is one of the few things we cannot blame on the Ancient Greeks. Their philosophers hotly debated time, with Antiphon believing time didn’t “exist” instead it was a concept to measure the world; Parmenides and Zeno believing time was an illusion because time meant things change and since there were things that didn’t change like mental representations ergo time didn’t exist; Aristotle believing time wasn’t its own independent thing instead it was a relational concept between objects. Plato was the only (recorded) Greek who viewed time as something with a beginning and was created by an unspecified creator. The only thing special about Plato’s view is that the early Christians decided that they could use his idea of linear time to create a narrative of a created beginning with an ultimate ending. This furthered the idea that everything happens for a reason, which was a balm because it gave order to the madness and purpose in the chaos. This idea of “sacred time” still resonates in the “secular” world, our “modern means better” mindset is absolutely tied to this view of time as linear. However, if you strip away all of the ideology tied to linear time, there isn’t much that points to this idea of time being a straight, upward progression toward utopia; there is evidence that time is cyclical though. The sun rises and falls. The seasons progress in a repeating pattern. History repeats itself. Thus, time should be viewed as an infinite circle with highs and lows and new versions of the same problems and solutions, repeating on and on and on. 

For the second part, history is not objective. A goodly portion of the population knows the cliche that “history is recorded by the victors,” which is true for the most part though there have been a couple of notable exceptions (confederate backtracking and the Lost Cause narrative). Because history is recorded by the victors, it can never be objective as it is only their view that is seen as correct. Thus art history, which has been recorded by the “victors” of society, is also not objective. Just as the victors will leave out those they view as inferior or other in their record of historical importance, art history has notably looked over contributions made by women and people of color. Once we can accept that our understanding of history is a narrative specifically designed with a beginning and an end that fallaciously points to progress while leaving out the parts about those the “authors” deem unworthy, the sooner we can destroy that idea like a baby destroying their first birthday cake. 

By destroying the box we had put time in, we can now view art history not as a straight progression from prehistoric and lower forms of art to the pinnacle of modern art to the stratosphere of future art, but rather as cycles of artists finding new ways to portray the same base ideas with the current flavor. This is also where we can see concentric circles of overlapping influence and where we can seek out the voices that have been left out and forgotten. While both women and artists of color have been excluded from the traditional canon of art history, I will focus on women for the time being. 

Over the course of history, there has been no lack of women in art, unfortunately, they were not respected as artists in their time due to misogynistic reasons. Also, the acceptable forms of artistic expression for women have historically been tied to textile production which don’t last as long as the forms acceptable for men. Take for example tapestries, due to their organic makeup very few have survived the centuries, and the few that do are not credited to their actual creators. Take for example the Bayeux Tapestry, more accurately known as the Bayeux Embroidery, an embroidered cloth nearly 230 feet long and 20 inches tall that depicts the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. The cloth is thought to date to the 11th century, one of the oldest surviving textile artworks. The cloth was commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William the Conquerer’s half-brother; it is thought to have been designed by a range of religious figures from Scolland the abbot of St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury to Lanfranc the archbishop of Canterbury. What is certain is that none of them did the actual embroidering, the actual physical work of stitching was most probably completed by female needleworkers who were not recorded or remembered by history. So one of the most famous examples of medieval textile art is known only by the men connected to it and not the women who did the actual work of creating. This is a deliberate erasure of the contributions of female artists because they were considered unimportant to the overall story. 

Thomson, Jonny. “A Brief History of (Linear) Time.” Big Think, 10 Jan. 2024, bigthink.com/thinking/a-brief-history-of-linear-time/.

[beardedhandstoadshark]

How do you approach the storytelling aspect of Etrian Odyssey, which often involves player exploration and discovery?

(Oh shit Etrian Odyssey question hello!??)

*Ahem* anyways! I see the gameplay as part of the told story, not just the text that keeps popping up. On one hand because the game is built to let the player have some imagination with the story through how you play it which is very fun, and it makes for some fun imagined shenanigans when it comes to certain quests, but specifically because by doing so, it reframes the story of the very first game completely into a sort of "history repeats itself“ narrative.

Ignore your own gameplay and it’s a fairy basic "go explore the labyrinth oh no plot twist the secret is evil here’s a final boss“ story, feat. Your own headcanons about your characters while going on a very deadly roadtrip. But with the gameplay, starting from the third stratum, it suddenly becomes increasingly clear that what you’re doing, going further and further in, is to go too far in. You don’t have to take that mission, you don’t have continue exploring, you don’t have to kill everything and everyone in your way just to satisfy, what? Your greed? Your curiosity? To say that you did it? Regardless of what it is, you do it anyways, push through the forest folks‘ sacred grounds and kill their god to lay your eyes upon the final stratum - and are greeted by Lost Shinjuku. The aftermath of your own actions already taken by those before, staring right at you.

At this point basically every npc also goes "hey guys maybe stop??“ (in German anyways, first 2 games still got localized). Minus gameplay, it’s regular worry about what’ll happen once the secret is out. With gameplay, then you’re the one causing it and it’s more blaring signals to stop going too far before it’s too late. And then the post game stratum is literally a bloody hell. (Figuratively too because what even is F27). Which also may or may not be the inner organs of the tree you just killed, or the trickled through the ground blood of all the people the labyrinth killed, but that’s another topic.

TLDR if you factor in the gameplay to the story you suddenly have a meta-narrative with your continued playing reflecting what most likely lead to the Apocalypse, only small-scale/contained to the Labyrinth instead of the whole world.

…though I also never played Untold 1 but heard they heavily retconned that part for some mind control plot, which. I get why, because you preferably want your protagonists to be the good guys so the player can feel hyped, but. Cmon you had a great piece of gameplay-driven indirect story telling here! Or maybe I’m also giving Altus too much credit, idk.

(…it’s probably that, isn’t it? Oh well. Good thing the game is built to let you imagine your own story beats! :D)