#i have more to say but it's tangentially related

[taxideermied]

Hi hi! Thanks all for the respectful discussion on this topic. I've enjoyed reading the notes and additions very much. I want to say, though, that this will be the last time I plan on discussing this topic on this post because I'm not particularly interested in full-time discourse on my blog, and also because it's becoming a little unwieldy for me personally to deal with a super long post lol. I am making this last addition for the sake of clarity as to my claims for anyone reading my blog, not to necessarily sway anyone's opinion.

With that said, I think some of my points have been missed/misconstrued.

Firstly, my original post was about mindful messaging more than anything. Mainly: if you have an issue with something in the community, don't swing a wide net because you risk hurting those adjecent to your problem. That physical nonhumanity was involved was tangential, but nonetheless that's where we went.

So, secondly, and I hope this is clear, I am not advocating for an anti-science approach to nonhumanity, nor am I advocating for blind faith. I specifically avoided the subject outside of my original post where I said the community at large discusses scientifically unverifiable experiences. I think we are all in agreement that self-perception such as Sundragon's "I feel like a dragon" is not scientifically verifiable, but is still "valid" in this space, so I don't feel the need to elaborate on that point.

Where I think my statements are unclear (and for the record, this is on me for not being as specific as I could have been) is in the issue of claim vs expression of personal experience. I think this in conjunction with "subjective verses objective experience" is a little bit difficult to parse so bare with me.

My sense of the community is that those who experience and discuss physical shifts do so because it is an expression of personal experience, not because it is a claim. This is a part of their nonhumanity for whatever reason they may have. It is not a claim because I have not seen anyone trying to prove their experience to anyone else, merely discuss it and relate to like-minded individuals. This does not mean you don't have to be skeptical, but I do not believe your disbelief means that these members of our community should self-censor or be subject to demands for proof. Someone talking about something they feel on a personal blog is not the same as them putting a thought into the "marketplace of ideas" to be debated and verified. While I don't think anyone in this thread did so directly, I feel like the line of thinking suggested here could encourage "proof demanding" behavior.

So what about the tricky subjective vs objective experience issue? Surely physical shapeshifting is an objective experience. Well, again, I think there's nuance here. Is the shifter in question insisting that the transformation is 100% verifiably happening in the reality experienced by others, so much so it could be captured on camera if only one worked properly in the moment? Or are they asserting that they perceive their own physical shifts? All objective experiences are filtered through a subjective lens because you are a brain that perceives the world through sensory organs. You are not experiencing a 1:1 recreation of the world. As a friend eloquently put it: "None of us experience reality-as-it-is. All of us, even people who don't know what a therian is, have some level of disconnect with objective reality. Our experience of the world is imperfect; talking about those experiences is not a claim about shared-truth, it's a claim about personal-truth." See: the parable of blind men touching an elephant. One person's experience of objective truth is not the disproving of another's, even if it conflicts.

Finally, there's the synthesis of these issues regarding how we shepherd the community from within.

If your issues with physical shifters is with those who claim to shift verifiably in a collective reality and claim this is something that can be taught or who otherwise encourage cult-like mentalities, then vis a vis my first point, say that those are the individuals and/or paradigms you take issue with. Nothing wrong with pointing out harmful practices, but lumping harmful ones in with harmless ones is irresponsible.

If your issues are with all physical nonhumans or those who discuss scientifically unverifiable personal objective experiences in a way that harms no one, then I would suggest, I guess, in the kindest terms, to get over it. What is the other option? As far as I can tell, censorship or other methods of driving these individuals out of the community, and I personally don't feel comfortable taking that route. I don't think we as a community would be better off in doing so.

Okay. I think that is everything. Thank you for bearing with me if you read all this, I appreciate it very much! If anyone is still interested in talking this over with me, shoot me an ask and I'll (maybe) respond. Like I said, not trying to be a discourse blog, so I can only do so much.

If you’re going to assert science in a community full of people discussing their scientifically unverifiable experiences I think you should consider what you’re really trying to say. If you’re not trying to call people liars then there’s probably a better way to go about making your point than enumerating the reasons why you think they’re lying.

[saetiate]

Say, about your tiger hybrid reader post.....I can also resonate with this.

I am really curious about how Blue lock characters will be able to deal with this or not. If so then how ?....( Really into characters like Sae, Rin, Kaiser, Isagi , Luna, Nagi etc)

you have no idea how surprised i am to see luna in this list ahaha this post will have sae, kaiser, isagi bc i need more time to think for the others

sae

sae is very much a handler. he figures out what you like and don't like without you saying a thing and helps add things to his home that you'll actually enjoy, he's not afraid to let a wild thing run free. (where else are you going to go? he'll come collect you if he has to.)

the thing about sae is he's so neutral all the time. he's strangely endeared seeing your bite and your anger, unaffected by it as he pats your head and moves on. he treats you like any other pet, any other hybrid. even though you know inherently that you are not, that you are a predator first.

he's not dismissive of it, he knows and acknowledges it through the things he buys for you and the food he gives you. but it doesn't make him react differently to you.

it's like this to the point where you want him to react. something, anything. so you switch gears, and that's how the obedience rolls in. you settle down next to him, put your hands on the edge of his thigh, and all he does is look at you with a curious look.

what it takes feels ultimately humiliating in its own right: asking directly for it. he gives into you once you do, collects you onto his lap and rewards you for it. it makes warmth bloom inside of you, like sunlight on skin.

he makes you crave him, his comfort, his touch, until you never want to leave.

kaiser

kaiser's veryyy interesting i think, on one hand he coos at you despite your claws, on the other he's not afraid to fight back. he'll pin you down to the sofa if you try to take a swipe at him and he'll do it with ease and a shit-eating grin. "awh, kitty, wanna try again?"

he's not afraid. you've heard him before, if it's in physicality, he'll win, because he's had a much worse upbringing than most people. he knows what fight feels like intimately. but he's taken you in, so you're his. his problem kitty, through and through. take it out on him if you want, he'll even smile at you for it, until all that fight is drained out of you. and once that's all done, he'll dote on you.

"got it all out then?" he'll say it as he tends to the wounds you have, whether it's nails bitten down to the quick or light scratches from when you tried to fight him.

there's something freeing about having someone stay with you even with all your harshness. feels like forgiveness, finally receiving acceptance, for being what you are. he sticks with you through it all, earns your loyalty until you're putty in his hands.

isagi

isagi is good at heart and shows it. he has no hesitation trying to save an almost-dead thing on the streets. i think at first your ferociousness shocks him and you think oh that's it then. he's going to let you go. but he doesn't and after the first time it never shocks him again. you do it again and again to test him and he just cleans up the mess and pats you on the head. he takes your hands and sits you down with him on the couch asks you with gentleness what you need, what he can do for you.

if you tell him, he's grateful and he'll give you what you want. if you refuse to, he'll continue to hold space with you and work it out on his own. either way, he's learning you, adjusting to you.

he's ultimately so forgiving that you give in. kindness comes easily to isagi, so does understanding others, finding out what to say or do to ultimately relax you. he's never angry, he's worried about you. being extended a kindness like that over and over again… it deserves to be returned, doesn't it?

other tiger hybrid reader things: this , a short sae x reader thing for it , tangentially related to this

[sceebybeeby]

nowhere else to go

[essektheylyss]

Since I have finally defeated the horrors*, I'm starting to catch up on World Beyond Numbers after having fallen behind when school started after arc 1, and I did in fact have to pause to take a walk to get some baklava before getting too far into the Citadel food crawl because it is late afternoon and I was not gonna make it.

[ceramicbeetle]

the thing is, you’re absolutely right! because what neurotypical people sometimes don’t understand is the massive difference between the average level of social interaction that they themselves vs other people get outside of organized or scheduled events like work or school, and also don’t understand the massive difference between what failure looks like, and how those two things overlap. i’m told that among the average neurotypical person, they’ll make a point to talk to people in their lives or hang out with friends or go on dates or chat with other people in public spaces, al to have casual interactions, multiple times a day, multiple days a week. meaning, if they have a failed social interaction, it’s buffered by the many successful interactions they’ll go on to have. failure most likely won’t mean complete isolation, because they have multiple avenues of interaction to fall back on. and, moreover, a failure in a social interaction when you have (on average) fewer than most means that now rather than that person going “oh that was a weird interaction, i talk to them a lot and it’s not usually like that, maybe it was an off day” they go “huh i don’t know that person very well maybe they’re just like that?”, which means that the odds are way different on whether relationships stay good after mistakes.

social skills are not actually as inherent as neurotypical people like to think. it’s just that when you’re always in practice, always getting back on the proverbial horse, the advice “just get back out there!” does actually work very well. but if you’re not able to do that for any variety of reasons, you can’t play the game the same way. my advice is not “try harder”, it’s “lower your expectations for yourself on what a good interaction and a moment of connection might be”. just as it’s possible you’re somehow unintentionally upsetting people, it’s possible you’re unintentionally making them feel happy, or valued, or heard, even in small, passing interactions. remind yourself that you’re working with fewer resources and a much more limited data pool. a lot of the advice being given is coming from someone who assumes they understand what the math looks like for you, because it’s very difficult to imagine that other side. so instead of trying to overlay a system made for someone who has resources that you just don’t have, you need to figure out what a functional system of interaction looks like for you, and adapt the advice given to fit your situation. my advice, bearing that in mind, is that finding communities and groups can look like a lot of different things, and getting your social needs met can come from a lot of sources, and ideally should! you would understand best what your situation is, and there’s no shame in changing tact to accommodate for your own needs and boundaries.

forgot to answer this for a bit lol BUT yeah, the post was a little bit more about the Conceptual argument than it was about me specifically, so I'm definitely already with you re: 'finding out what your Individual social goals are and working based off of those instead having high expectations based off of other people's metric' stuff. You definitely have a huge point with the "social buffer disparity" between NT people and ND people, where failures are both less demoralizing internally and less impactful externally when you're able to have a greater average of interactions generally also

but I really appreciated the "just as it’s possible you’re somehow unintentionally upsetting people, it’s possible you’re unintentionally making them feel happy, or valued, or heard, even in small, passing interactions" aspect of this message. I do definitely have a recurring problem of like, labeling Myself as an Uncanny Valley Person and automatically assuming that every interaction I'm involved in must be some level of uncomfortable for the other person -- it actually was kind of a revolution moment reading this and realizing that OH it does make sense that if I can unintentionally make people uncomfortable, it's statistically just as likely that I can unintentionally lift people's spirits in one way or another! So thank you very much for that!!

[sysig]

Evil Time is great :) (Patreon)

[morgenlich]

the main thing that does keep me hesitant about whether or not i have ocd is that, while i absolutely have obsessions, and they are frequent and distressing enough they significantly impact my qol and make me genuinely suicidal, i have never really had compulsions. i know there’s like a thing where you can be diagnosed w ocd when you only have the obsessions, but ehhh it at least makes me wonder how likely i am to find a therapist who will take me seriously about it

[drop--pop--candy]

i think chika should get different glasses in her cards. because glasses are way underutilized as an accessory

[brown-little-robin]

get loved, nerd

hello.

commentary in the tags. it is slightly negative, so please feel free to simply scroll on if that's not for you!

[rxttenfish]

i feel alright putting this here because i think i’ve already mentioned the fact that the merkingdom, in my lore, has killed eldritch deities and made a habit of it on this blog before, and if not, i’ve discussed my feelings in regards to this in canon (and how its actually been a huge disappointment to me, because it was one of those things that i assumed would NEVER be canon and thus felt unique to me, while still having a basis to say these things with a degree of justification for them, and i hate getting this while everything else and especially miranda’s character suffers for it)

but i do think its interesting with aaravi, with the stated goal as a slayer to be the one to kill an elder god and show that it can be done and they can be defeated, and miranda’s people and their history being VERY literal proof that it IS possible

and the main reason it WAS possible for the merkingdom was not some special thing given to them by proxy of them being merfolk, but just. they got their start much earlier than other societies. it was something they were able to figure out because they just had the time to figure it out, and i like the implication of this, that not only is it possible, but its something that can occur again and again. its literally not something unique, not something special. anyone, given the right time and the right resources, could do it if they had to.

anyone is able to save themselves. if it bleeds, then they can kill it. if it breathes, then they stand a chance.

(though then what the merkingdom did with the corpses of the elder gods once they were dead is uh. not a part of that factor. don’t worry about what’s under miranda’s skin it’s fiiiiiiiiiiiiine)

[talkorsomething]

Washed my costume & my binder ... honestly after having to wash the costume in the SINK all season washing my binder is so easy. Swish swish bitch you're clean now. (Still smells bad but that is because we have the unscented soap + i have been very lax about washing it during the season lol)

I didn't plan anything else to do today ... i could ask the group which extra game they want me to bring, maybe? And POSSIBLY wash the dishes so making bread to take with me isn't such an ordeal but uhm . We have Giant Ants in our kitchen and i hate them. But I don't think I've washed a dish in like at least two months so ... enrichment. If I do it, anyways. Not like there's much else to do?

Have to remember to practice later, if the wind will allow it. Do all the stretching & warmups, at least! I felt so sore yesterday and it was only partially because i actually got to help with the floor. Also i did not do any warmups and was only outside practicing flag work so considering dayton is TWO DAYS AWAY!!!!!!! I should ............ try to actually do that.

[clockwayswrites]

Danny in Metropolis Ch2/Part 1

You all voted 🌆- I deliver! masterpost this is a first draft, please no editing or concrit <3

Kon knocked on the door frame of Clark’s office. The door was open. It always was unless Clark was on the phone or working on some story he didn’t feel Kon and Jon should see (as if Kon wasn’t a superhero too). Clark must be editing at the moment with how he was frowning at the screen with his nose all crookedly scrunched up. The expression cleared with Kon’s knock, and Clark turned around with a little smile.

“Heya Kon, how was school today?”

Kon shrugged. School was fine, but it had been another day that Danny hadn’t eaten any lunch except for the apple sliced Kon had stubbornly nudged his way. “Actually, I kinda had something, like, tangentially related to school I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Sure of course!” Clark quickly cleared off the second chair in the room and set the reference books on the floor at his feet.

Kon had a feeling the books wouldn’t be in a neat stack for long. For being Superman, Clark could be incredibly clumsy. Kon thought it might come from having to be so careful with every little movement that it all had to come out somewhere.(Not that Kon understood or anything…)

Once Kon had actually crossed the threshold and took the seat, Clark smiled (a little small, a little nervous) and asked, “So what’s this tangential issue?”

Kon fidgeted with one of of his many rings, turning it on his finger. “I’ve mentioned Danny, right?”

Clark nodded. “The new student that you partnered up with for your English project. Are you having trouble working with him?”

“No,” Kon said quickly. “Danny’s good. He’s, um, great actually. I’m just worried about him.”

“Worried how?” Clark asked as he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Kon couldn’t decided if he looked more like a reporter or a dad right then.

“He doesn’t eat anything at lunch,” Kon explained. The words came out in a rush. “I don’t think he trusts food from his house much. Seems his parents bring their research work home sometimes, or used to pretty badly. So, of course I’m worried about him eating dinner too! But like, at least lunch I can know about? And he doesn’t want to eat the school lunches which I totally get, they’re nasty. So, I just, was maybe wondering, especially if I helped out some, if I could bring a second lunch with me for him?”

“Sure, of course we can, Kon,” Clark said gently. Softly. “Do you know if he has any food allergies or preferences?”

“Um, yeah, I asked him and made notes,” Kon said. He was a bit thrown by the easy acceptance, but he wasn’t going to try to over analyze it. Instead, Kon pulled out his phone and over to the notes he’d made (hopefully stealthily) while they had worked on the project. “So, meat is iffy. He says it depends on the day. But tofu is out. Weirdly also no plain broths, jello, or Gatorade? Or at least not cherry or lime of those.”

Kon didn’t expect Clark to frown at the list. It was a bit weird, sure, but it wasn’t really hard to work around most of that. No meat was the hardest part, but there was always yogurt or PB&J.

“Has Danny been seriously ill?”

Kon looked up from his phone, startled. “What?”

“It’s just that broths, jello, and drinks like Gatorade are often prescribed for something called a ‘clear’ diet that people are put on for certain medical conditions, procedures, or hospital stays. Since Danny ate those things enough for them to be on a no list…”

“Oh." Kon looked back down at the phone in his hands. He took a deep breathe and made himself relax his grip before he broke another phone. “I think there’s been a few times that he’s almost fainted at school and he had a really nasty nose bleed once. You think he’s really sick?”

“I might just be reading into it too much,” Clark said with that ‘trying to soothe civilians’ smile of his.

It didn’t help.

“But that list is no problem at all! I’m happy to pack another lunch. It’s no more work really to do one more. But, you’ll need to pick up a lunch box for him this weekend so I have it for Monday, okay?”

“Yeah, of course. I’ll do that. Thank you, ah, Clark.” Dad.

“Of course, Kon. I’m happy to help you out with whatever you need.”

“Thanks, I’ll let you get back to work,” Kon said before he left quickly.

[radioactive-mouse]

I get how tempting it is to just label flower husbands as “toxic” and move on, but god they can be SO much more nuanced than that, it makes me insane.

I think something that goes largely unexplored by the fanbase is c!scott’s obsession with composure. he’s clearly very proud of his ability to stay calm under pressure and be two steps ahead of everyone else— not that he’s afraid to rely on people, him and cleo very clearly have that unshakable trust between them, but i think that sometimes he gets so wrapped up in being steady, reliable scott, never hot-headed, never spiteful, or clumsy, or nervous.

and jimmy is a very real threat to that composure, more often than not.

and i think the way their relationship functions in 3rd life, while steady at the time, definitely set them up for complications down the road. scott, for as fiercely dedicated to his allies as he is, kind of tends to handle jimmy with kid gloves for the earlier parts of their relationship. he’s not very good at the death game, but that’s fine, he doesn’t need to be, scott will take care of it— he’ll get them set up with armor and potions and walls and jimmy can do… whatever it is he does when scott’s not around. mostly getting swindled, if he had to guess. but it’s fine, because scott can be steady, level headed, clever—

i do think most of scott’s ribbing about how he doesn’t know why he lets jimmy do anything when all he does is get scammed half the time is genuinely all in good fun, (jimmy is more than happy to play the fool most of the time, if only to bring a little bit of levity to things) it is super symptomatic of the way scott actually thinks about him. i don’t believe he thinks jimmy is actually stupid or anything, but i do think scott doesn’t quite trust him to get anything done. scott would never in a million years let himself lean on jimmy for any kind of support, because in scott’s mind jimmy’s job is to be bright and brash and only listen to that heart of his that’s too big for his body, too big for this game.

and i think too often we forget just how much losing jimmy destroyed scott in 3rd life. you ever think about how wrecked he must’ve been to place 10th despite being a consistent finalist in every other season? do you think about how all he has left is the burning, white-hot urge for revenge from the second jimmy’s body hit the ground?

i don’t think scott ever wants to feel like that again. i don’t think scott wants anyone to see him like that again. i think scott tries very hard to love jimmy from a safe distance where no one gets hurt. and i think that distance fucking kills jimmy, metaphorically speaking.

(also, tangentially related, i think there’s something to be said for how instantly tango goes “we only have a short time together, your curse will probably get us killed, and that’s fine.” and how jealous scott gets of that sentiment. as far as scott is concerned, tango and jimmy are of the same niche— they feel everything, loudly, even if it causes problems and even if it gets messy. and god that just makes his blood boil.)

i’m just so… entranced with the way scott carries himself with so much confidence and it’s not like he’s insecure, he really believes that, he’s a strong player and he knows that, but also revealing any emotion he deems to be “ugly” or “messy” makes him start to completely unravel. the driving force behind him is always love and loyalty and protectiveness over the people he cares about, but he’s juggling that with being dead set on never getting so close that losing them will completely ruin him.

anyway, this is getting away from me, but i think a lot of jimmy’s frustration with scott comes from the fact that he refuses to let their relationship go both ways, and i think by the time of the infamous “say i love you back” scene in limlife he’s just exhausted with throwing himself repeatedly against scott’s brick wall of perfectionism. that, and the whole Situation between them in double life, which i could honestly make it’s own post but good god i need to STOP typing or this will go on forever. forgive my completely disorganized ramblings i just have been trying to get all this down on paper FOREVER

[sporkarts]

Rio and Subtext

I'm pretentious and I love media analysis so I wanted to break open the scene where Rio and Agatha fight, right after Agatha has broken out of the spell. The fun part about media analysis is that I could be 100% wrong!! and that's okay lol

SO! AAA uses something called re contextualization, where almost every interaction has a layer that is given a greater context later on and i LOVE it. It's not 100% perfect but the biggest moments work so so well. I think one of the best examples of this is the first fight between Agatha and Rio. Looking back, especially during eps 4 and 5 it's really hard to see what the hell Rio was even doing there. But I firmly believe that Rio showed up to warn Agatha that the seven were coming. YES OBVIOUSLY her showing up was also a vehicle for exposition, but diegetically, I think it was Rio's way of warning Agatha.

Sources:

The beginning of the fight, it's obvious even from a first watch-through that Rio is holding back. She easily overpowers Agatha multiple times and at first we're meant to interpret this as someone 'playing with their food' so to speak. On a larger scale, I believe this is a test. "oh hey, you really are out, but you're also so vulnerable"

next, Agatha yields, something I think Rio isn't used to seeing her do. It's here where Rio confirms that Agatha 1. has no power and 2. has no idea what's been happening while she's been trapped.

Then, Rio concedes. She can't kill Agatha, but the Salem Seven can. On the first watchthrough, it sounds like she's tangentially related to the Salem Seven. She's dressed similarly to them, she's the one that mentions them, and she also specifically says she'll "tell them where to find you"

However, in Episode 5, we get context on a few things.

Who the Salem Seven are

Rio is very defensive of Agatha ("when her own mother tried to have her executed" "where is she?")

Rio doesn't particularly like the seven, in fact she seems to, at least in part, dislike them ( "they became a feral, hive-minded coven bent on revenge")

Rio doesn't like Evanora Harkness ("yeah well, her mother can't have her")

At no point is Rio ever shown to command or work with the salem seven, but she is shown protecting Agatha (verbally) from anyone who tries to take her away

When Rio is revealed as Death, it re-contextualizes a lot of the rest of their interaction. Rio cannot kill Agatha because it's against the cosmic rules (which we also learn she follows STAUNCHLY) but she also cannot directly save Agatha. If the Salem Seven were to attack her, Rio could not save her from dying. This also puts a lot of emphasis on their final battle, wherein Rio is so distraught that she's more than willing to break the rules of her existence just to bring Agatha closer to her.

SO!

her parting words from ep 1

"I am not the only one who wants to see you dead. Wants to see you burn, or hang, or drown" ... "Okay Agatha, but I'll be sure to tell them where to find you." ..."the worst of them, the Salem Seven, I expect you'll see them at sundown. After all these centuries, Agatha Harkness will finally meet her end, it really warms the heart" ..."yes I do, it's black and it beats for you"..."te veo"

translation: I love you. I cannot kill you (because of rules), I'm upset with you, but I cannot kill you (because it would kill me). And I'm obsessed enough with you that I cannot let anyone else kill you, but I cannot save you. So I am warning you, they aim to kill you and they can kill you. They will not hesitate and you cannot escape this if they find you, so find another solution. I love you so much my Very Being is devoted to you. I love you, and I see you.

again, yes, so much of that is exposition (antagonist setup, inciting incident etc) but I really and truly believe that this was a warning above all. feel free to disagree! i just love love talking about the deeper meaning behind things :3

[windcarvedlyre]

Wait Venti “mixes things up in canon”? Like, confuses which time he’s in??

I don’t think I’ve noticed. If you want, could you give some examples?

Yeah! There are 1-3 examples of this: 1 that only has time-related explanations, 2 which can be interpreted that way.

The first one is these two lines from different parts of the prologue, in both scenes where we meet Venti at Windrise.

He says exactly the same thing twice and notices that the second time. The delivery is almost identical too (at least in Chinese).

It's too long and flowery to be a coincidence imo, even from him; I believe it's much likelier that he messed up a script due to stress. As he points out himself, he only says 'these things' whenever he's 'down on his luck'.

There are two explanations for this that make sense to me:

He interacts with time nonlinearly. The specific nature of that could vary from simple time travel to jumping around branching timelines to experiencing more than one point in time in parallel; at this point I have no way to narrow that down.

He's in a time loop. He's been through the prologue before and he's partly on autopilot. Maybe Teyvat gets reset and he remembers previous loops, maybe it's something shorter.

Tangentially, if loop theory is true and Teyvat's on its fourth loop then the way he introduces himself will retroactively be even funnier:

Though his infamous song line would be slightly more consistent with intepretation one, as would a text about wind and time I can't locate that describes wind as 'moving between the pages of a book' (considering Teyvat operates on story logic) vs time being more destructive. Interpretation two is still possible if he knows 'future' songs from later in previous loops.

Anyway, the other two mixups concern the traveller.

The first is his infamous introductory voiceline:

Which isn't subtle. The second is from his story quest as he flees Angel's Share:

In which he refers to the statue's hands as 'the usual place' despite us never having been there with him. The dialogue immediately afterwards confirms this is intentional, not something implied to have happened offscreen. Like the Windrise lines, he says this while not at his best emotionally.

Venti also really, really likes the traveller in general- a bit much for someone who hasn't known us that long. His voiceline about his greatest wish puts us on par with Nameless Bard.

Both of the above have a non-time explanation: Venti may have befriended the traveller 500 years ago, the traveller has forgotten everything, and for unknown reasons Venti is trying to hide this from us. However, time travel, experiencing the future and present simultaneously, or knowing them from prior timeloop resets are also viable explanations for why he knows them and has spent time with them already.

Sooo yeah! Venti's hiding something big either way, but he's not as slick as he wants to be.

[transmutationisms]

the idea that 'science' is an unmitigated and inherent social good---a politically neutral and universally beneficial process of accumulating knowledge---is wildly ahistorical and dangerously, wilfully ignorant of the role that science and its purveyors / practitioners have played in imperial and colonial expansion. warwick anderson went so far as to say that colonial medicine was better understood as a discourse of settlement than one of health promotion, & we can see this quite easily in, for example, french doctors' use of the nostalgia diagnosis to guide colonial policy in algeria in the 1830s, attempting to securely settle a french population there; or in the development of a science of 'water cures', spa treatments considered to mitigate the insalubrious effects of foreign (particularly tropical) environments, for which the french army by the 1890s granted routine medical leave because the 'health' of its soldiers was not a matter of individual interest but a state resource.

but medicine is in many ways an easy case when it comes to the relationship between science and the state; all too often we still seem reluctant to acknowledge, for example, the pursuit of economic botany and animal / plant breeding in the early modern period as contributors to discourses of acclimatisation and proto-eugenics, sciences that were given state financial support on these utilitarian grounds & not for any high-minded general pursuit of 'knowledge'; or the development of navigational instruments and knowledge from the 14th century or so onward as a project explicitly funded and intended to permit faster, cheaper, more reliable colonial exploration and travel; or the sheer amount of research in physics and chemistry that has been and is devoted to weapons development or natural resource extraction; or the promise of space travel as a further possibility for obtaining raw materials as well as for settlement---often marketed in terms and visual rhetoric explicitly comparing the 'space colony' to its terrestrial precursor: 'the final frontier', depicted as both lush tropical paradise & as rugged american west, waiting to be conquered & brought to heel.

i am of course not hostile to 'science' in any totalising way; this would be as indefensible a position as the automatic 'defence' of all such practices; they're not monolithic or intrinsically doomed to serve state interests. but it is simply irresponsible to pretend that the scientific inquiry into something---describing it, measuring it, taxonomising it---is inherently a social good, or that the pursuit of 'knowledge' is ever an apolitical endeavour. knowing, seeing, & measuring the world grant immense power; states and empires know this. scientific inquiry is not tangentially related to imperial and colonial expansion; often it is a critical piece of the machinery by which these processes occur. wilful ignorance of this fact in favour of an optimistic conception of science as a universal social good is not just inaccurate but propagandistic & an advancement of state & imperial interests.