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a-driftamongopenstars · 19 days ago

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alright, i finally finished Dragon Age the Veilguard.

tldr; 3/10. I didn't like it.

If you enjoyed the game and would rather keep enjoying it, please don't click the read more section as what follows is rather critical.

I can finally sit down with my thoughts and put them together in a more cohesive structured review, touching on most things that I wanted to address. I'll start with positives and then focus on the negatives.

Warning, this is VERY long.

Overall, I had a neutral to negative impression of DatV, which got worse by the end of the game. It had some good moments, but they were entirely unexplored and underutilized, suffering from bad writing. While the game itself is rather pretty, it didn't outweigh the dialogues, the stories and the lore butchering that took place.

1. Environment and visuals. 8/10.

I think Veilguard is a very beautiful game. I enjoyed exploring the corners of this new world, the little bits of environment design and storytelling that it had. It felt magical, certain locations were mesmerizing! I couldn't stop staring at the valley where you go to with Harding, the carcass of a titan.

2. Combat. 9/10.

I love flashy combat, I enjoy hack and slash, so until the very end of the game I was having most fun in combat. Yes there was repetitiveness but I tried to combat (hehe) it with changing my abilities and weapons every now and then. I liked combos and I liked timed parries. Enemy tactics got a bit boring by the end, but a few enemies still surprised me and challenged me.

.... That's where positives end. Now on to the negatives.

1. Characters. 2/10.

I don't understand what happened. Almost all the characters in this game were tuned down to a two-dimensional personality, "good" and "bad" - and absolutely no nuance. This happened not only to the villains, but to the different NPCs and even our companions. Their interests got narrowed down to single points of interest (Lucanis and coffee being a prime example to me), their motivations got watered down.

This is not what I expect from a Bioware game. I want to be challenged, I want to dislike characters or approve of their choices. I like characters who are messy and complex and don't always have their shit together.

I like villains who may have other reasons for their choices, other than "ba ha ha, I am so evil and I will do evil things". Where is Alexius who sold himself to the Elder one, just so he could save his beloved son? Where is Samson, forsaken by the Chantry and turned to red lyrium with his addiction? Where is Calpernia, misguided in her choices, just to free the slaves of Tevinter?

Where are the slaves of Tevinter anyway?? That's another topic.

2. Rook. 4/10.

On one hand, I liked playing Rook. They were stoic but with a humorous side, ready to get the job done, compassionate to other people.

The problem is that it's the only Rook you can really play. The protagonist is set in their ways and their dialogues and there is very little to roleplay. Rook really does feel like a gentle manager, trying to get everyone to play along nicely, while providing therapy every now and then, and is excluded from the majority of friendly interactions with other people. That awkward glance everyone gives you after their banter is embarrassing. The way you can third wheel people, the way the game actively offers you to leave a couple of animated conversations between other people - why even include those? Why not make Rook a part of the 'team'?

I did like Rook's dynamic with Solas. They got to see a different side of him, one that's not presented heavily in Inquisition. But like everything else, it felt surface level and underexplored.

3. Story arc. 2/10.

I am left unsatisfied with the story. The pacing threw me off so much nearly every quest, it was hard to stay on track. From "we need to solve this NOW" to "actually, let's all slow down and deal with our problems", the plot's priorities were all over the place. We kept hearing about the gods and their destructive oppression, but we saw surprisingly little of it. Yes, there was the Blight, yes there were Venatori and the Antaam, but they felt more like a video game fodder and dressing rather than a part of the story.

Not to mention that all of those things made little sense to me. Why would the gods align with aforementioned factions? Why would the aforementioned factions align with the elven gods? In-game explanation was not enough for me, it did not make sense. Not with the established lore in the previous games.

I also did not enjoy the ending. While the idea of Solas binding himself to the Veil is good and does make sense, what was suggested as the good ending (inviting Mythal to deal with Solas essentially) actually left me feeling awful. I sent a man, full of regrets and self-loathing, on a lonely journey to figure himself out. That... did not sit right with me at all. Neither did the fact that Northern Thedas, supposedly the point of the gods' attack, gets to live and flourish, while Southern Thedas is dying of starvation and blight. That is UNHINGED to me.

4. Music. 1/10.

There was no music. I remember one track. It was not memorable whatsoever and I can't believe they hired Hans Zimmer to do exactly nothing. Just wow.

5. Lore. ???/10.

And here is the worst offender. What was done with Dragon Age lore is unacceptable. I was doing a head-in-hands every five minutes. This was a slap in the face of so many fans who enjoyed the three prior games and delved into deep, interesting lore of various races, countries, cultures and religions. Veilguard showed a big middle finger to all that.

Everyone has already touched upon the sanitization of different factions. From the suddenly slaveless Tevinter to found family Antivan Crows, everything has been scrubbed clean and made sweet and palatable and "good".

The Dalish clans have been removed from existence as we know them. The Antaam left the Qun? Don't even get me started on that. The Chantry has no influence in this game? Really? The Chantry? The biggest religion in Thedas? The one that we know has heavy presence in the Anderfels, the Black Divine in Tevinter? That Chantry?

I think it really hit me how disrespectful the game is during the quest of saving the Dalish elves, where apparently Elgar'nan's Venatori, uplifted to be his servants and chosen people, were trying to sacrifice them. It's a gross and oddly telling idea that the ancient Elven god turned to a faction of racist mages to sacrifice elven people. I actually can't believe I'm writing this. Just how much are you going to shaft these people? Mindboggling.

There is a lot more I have to say on this specific topic, and I probably will later, but the idea is this.

6. Romances. 2/10.

Whoever said this is a game with romance lied so hard. So hard. The romance was atrocious. From the badly written flirting to the lack of romantic scenes (I romanced Davrin), to the poorly timed and awkward 'final' romance moment... It was atrocious. I felt no connection between Rook and Davrin beyond what game was telling me. My actual companions got more screen time with their romances than me and my LI.

Damn, even Evka and Antoine, my single most beloved NPCs in this game, had more romance going on that my Rook.

---

All in all, Veilguard was a massive let down. After having enjoyed the first 3 games many times over, with multiple playthroughs, I was so excited to see how the story of the Inquisition, of the elves, would end. When I saw the first trailer for VG, I knew I would never get to see it. When I played the game, I was left with disappointment and disdain.

I'm glad there are people who enjoyed this game, genuinely. I'm sure there's something to find for anyone, but it was not for me. Nor was it for many other people. It was a let down. I feel like I'll never get the conclusion I wanted - so I'll have to write my own I guess.

I have more thoughts on this game that I might be sharing, but for now this is the review I wanted to write. Thanks for reading!

#dragon age #dragon age the veilguard #veilguard critical #bioware critical #adrift babbles

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thankskenpenders · 1 year ago

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Amy's fortune cards

The Sonic fandom has long been the kind of fandom that takes minor details very seriously, for better or worse. On the one hand, this means fans will really dig for the diamonds in the rough, latching onto fun character interactions, animations, bits of background worldbuilding, and more in pieces of Sonic media that many would write off as "the bad ones." But it also feels like every week another needlessly hostile debate over Sonic minutia erupts on Twitter, whether it's over individual lines of dialogue, fanart that makes Tails' shoes blue, or the ideal length and volume for Sonic's quills.

So it was probably inevitable that a fandom-wide debate would erupt upon seeing Amy's new gameplay style in the DLC for Sonic Frontiers, which takes the once-obscure fact that she enjoys reading tarot and shines a spotlight on it like never before.

I mean:

The thing is, while I basically always try to tune out Sonic fandom bickering... for once, I kind of sympathize with the detractors? Don't get me wrong, I like Amy's tarot stuff, and people on all sides of the discussion are being overly nasty about their opinions, as usual. (Sonic Twitter remains my personal hell.) But when I set aside the hyperbole and zoom out, I do think I understand why some fans are put off by the sudden shift in focus for the character, even if I think it's cool.

It's complicated. Let me attempt to present the cases for and against Amy's fortune cards

For years, I was always one of those fans who thought it could be fun if they played with Amy's tarot reading, or even leaned into some kind of magic with her. Part of that is my own biases showing, but there's just something that makes sense there, especially when you look at Sonic, Tails, and Amy as a trio. (I would argue that's the real "Team Sonic" these days, especially in the comics where Knuckles is more likely to be stuck on Angel Island or otherwise doing his own thing.)

You could argue that Tails is all about logic, relying on science and technology and deductive reasoning to solve problems. But Amy is all about emotion. She wears her heart on her sleeve, is extremely empathetic, and is very prone to magical thinking - both figuratively and sometimes literally. Her origin story has always been that her tarot cards told her it was her destiny to meet Sonic on Little Planet. She's claimed to be able to "sense" peoples' presences - particularly Sonic's. She's the type to believe that The Power of Love is a literal magical force. So, on some level, it makes sense to mirror Tails's science by having Sonic's other best friend believe in magic. And then Sonic is somewhere in the middle, primarily following his own gut instincts but taking advice from both of them as needed. This isn't totally accurate to how their dynamics actually function in canon stories, but I think it's a mode that could work for them.

Going off of that, it's fun to lean all the way into Amy being a magical girl, or even a witch, using her fortune telling as a foundation. Take, for example, this version of Amy from Diana Skelly's old Sonic cast redesigns from before she freelanced for Archie and IDW. This is one of MANY such redesigns for Amy.

Fast forward to the 2020s, and Amy's tarot cards are, in fact, finally getting brought up again in canon. Which is fun! I like seeing that. I like all of the individual stories involving Amy's fortune cards. This is a fun character trait for Amy, a fun nod to old lore, AND a fun storytelling device, all in one. It's really cool that the Sonic universe has its own thematically appropriate arcana, and that the cards are getting made as physical merch. And sure enough, the official card backs and borders were designed by none other than Diana Skelly, in yet another cool example of an ascendant fan leaving their mark on the series.

BUT... when you step back and look at the big picture, I get why some fans find this shift in focus jarring. At the moment, it's starting to feel like every new story about Amy involves her fortune cards to some degree.

The most recent mainline comic arc to feature Amy as the lead character, 2021's Trial by Fire arc, prominently features a sequence where she reads fortunes while camping with the girls. The Origins version of Sonic CD now bookends the game with scenes of Amy and her tarot cards. Sonic randomly mentioned it in a scene in Frontiers. And now, just this week, we got the (very cute, gorgeously illustrated) Amy's 30th Anniversary comic with a story revolving around Amy's tarot cards, followed the very next day by the Frontiers DLC in which she gets a brand new tarot-based moveset. Even her base melee attack now has her throwing tarot cards instead of swinging her hammer. Again, I like all of these individual things, but after years of it almost never coming up at all, it's VERY noticeable that Amy's tarot cards are suddenly everywhere.

To be fair, I'm looking at this from the perspective of a superfan who's actively following ALL Sonic media. Casual fans - especially kids - aren't necessarily going to be reading the comics every month, buying the thousandth rerelease of the Genesis games, or playing the ultra-hard new alternate ending DLC for a game that came out last year. Each of these stories is going to be someone's introduction to the idea that Amy can read tarot, and that's probably part of the idea behind this unified push.

But to play devil's advocate, for my fellow superfans, I understand why it feels like a very minor footnote of Amy's character is suddenly becoming the entire focus of her personality. While Amy has always been said to enjoy fortune telling, that wasn't really a character trait in and of itself, but rather an example of her being a typical girl who hopes she'll be able to find true love one day. It's less that Amy can literally predict the future and more like her using a cootie catcher or going "he loves me, he loves me not" while picking the petals off of a flower. So I get not vibing with this stuff, or feeling like it's being pushed very hard out of nowhere.

What I don't agree with are comparisons like "it's like if they made Knuckles' moveset revolve around him liking grapes." Like, I get it. Ian Flynn loves shoehorning in his little winking references for us nerds, and mentions of Amy's tarot cards were previously on the same level as other random bullet points from old Japanese manuals. But a multifaceted hobby like fortune telling that opens up so many narrative and aesthetic possibilities is obviously very different from having a favorite food. It's ALWAYS been a part of her story, not just a random fact, and there's no reason why the fortune telling can't be elevated to something more.

And, hell, even if it wasn't an established character trait, there's nothing inherently wrong with injecting new ideas into a character. One of the best Amy stories in recent years, the Free Comic Book Day special "Amy's New Hobby" written by Gale Galligan, came up with the idea that Amy's secretly been drawing little comics about her and her friends. Is this based on Lore? No. But it's cute, and helps tell the story of a younger Amy who's still coming out of her shell as both a hero and a friend.

Certain fans are also looking at Amy's Frontiers moveset and using it as evidence that once again the Vile American Contributors like Ian are CORRUPTING Sonic Team's perfect vision of Sonic with their misinterpretations. And like. Come on. Ian does not control the gameplay. He's a freelance writer. The tarot stuff is clearly something that Sonic Team likes if they made it the basis of Amy's new moveset - and, you know, if they keep approving comics and animations about Amy's fortune telling. None of this gets made without their blessing, and lord knows how much they can micromanage shit and shoot down ideas over the most minor of details.

Like, yeah, Amy's fortune telling was probably conceived less as a sign that she Knows Magic and more as a pretty mundane hobby for a lovesick young Japanese girl to have. But you're gonna sit there and tell me that using Amy's tarot cards for more than that could only be the result of a cultural misunderstanding? That nobody in Japan uses tarot card theming and aesthetics (or the general idea of magical cards) for the cool factor? Stardust Crusaders? Persona? The Astrologian class in FFXIV? Cardcaptor Sakura?? Hello??? Do you think Capcom put Gambit in Marvel vs. Capcom ironically because they thought using magic to throw cards at people was stupid? There's tons of precedent for this! It's nothing like Knuckles throwing grapes at people, be for real.

Giving Amy a very magical girl-esque moveset also just makes a lot of sense. For decades her hammer attacks have literally made sparkly heart shapes appear around her. Leaning into both that and her tarot cards in her new moveset makes a lot of sense to me.

But, admittedly... I do think it's very odd that her hammer is treated as a secondary element here, rather than having her primarily use her hammer and adding the cards for extra flair. If hitting the attack button made her swing her hammer instead of throwing cards, I'm not sure we'd even be having this discussion right now.

But the tarot-cycle and Amy riding her hammer like a witch's broom are fucking SICK and I will not concede on this point

The thing is, this whole fortune card discourse is but a small piece of a bigger problem. Amy's been a character who needed some work for ages, but there's basically nothing you can do with her without pissing SOMEONE off.

Years of stories where Amy's crush was her primary motivator and Sonic went "Ew, cooties!" have lead many casual fans to believe that being Sonic's obsessive fangirl is Amy's entire personality. At best people might call her Sonic's Minnie Mouse. This isn't just a matter of Amy having haters within the fandom - venture outside of that bubble and you'll realize that this is how MOST video game playing people seem to see her to this day. I don't feel like this is a fair assessment of the character, but this idea didn't come from nowhere. No matter how much good deeply entrenched Sonic fans may see in their old dynamic where Amy perpetually chases Sonic, this is a very real problem that Sonic Team has to contend with for their leading girl. Of course all those games where the way-past-cool protagonist thought Amy was annoyingly clingy and tried to get away from her made people think less of her.

If new stories were to go back to emphasizing Amy's crush on Sonic a little more, they'd probably be taken as confirmation that Amy's just the girl with a crush on Sonic and that this is her entire personality. Conversely, when the crush is played down, you piss off the hardcore SonAmy fans who don't seem to understand that they're Charlie Brown and Sega is Lucy holding the football. You can't win.

And so here we are. In the absence of what was once her defining trait, now reduced to an occasional blush or wink in Sonic's direction, new stories are trying to mine Amy's past for additional material to work with. Having been a thing fans wanted to see for years, right now we're getting a lot of tarot, but we're also getting reminders of her compassionate nature and her desire to go out of her way to help the little guy. This is an ongoing process. I continue to hope that her bubbly, exuberant demeanor can shine more in future stories. Now, I also hope that the tarot stuff gets balanced out a little better with other traits of hers. But I don't want it to go away. I think it's fun.

This course correcting is far from exclusive to Amy. Knuckles is getting stories that remind us that he's a competent fighter, an experienced treasure hunter, and even a self-taught archaeologist after years of him being perceived as either the dumb one or just the guy who stands in front of the Master Emerald all day. And Tails has been getting some stories reminding folks that he's a capable hero in his own right and not just Sonic's timid kid sidekick.

But no supporting character will ever compete with the sheer number of new ideas Sega has tried with Sonic himself. Like Amy, his Frontiers moveset has also given him half a dozen new superpowers that he never had before, from the Cyloop to air-slicing projectile attacks to his own take on Shadow Clone Jutsu and beyond. He's also been a hoverboarder, a swordsman, a time traveler, an Olympic athlete, a racecar driver, cursed with a Flame of Judgment, imbued with alien power, a fucking Werehog with stretchy powers, and on and on and on.

If Sonic can do all that, Amy can try out using a tarot-cycle.

Anyway TL;DR the REAL problem with Amy's current characterization... is where the FUCK is Amy's bestie, Honey the Cat???????

#tkp post

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hederasgarden · 4 months ago

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Okay you’ve mentioned several times about Scott’s breeding kink, so I just need to know how he’d react when he finally knocks his girl up. Or how he’d be with a pregnant reader, especially if they’re with Storm Par or Tyler’s crew and is out chasing storms all day

On Tuesdays my movie theatre does $6 movie tickets and with reading all your Scott and Tyler stories I’m thinking I need to go see Twisters again!

I love this ask so much!

This might surprise people who think I'm going to say he’ll become all mushy and sweet, but I think he’ll turn into an even bigger asshole. His worst qualities will come out during this time because there are so many variables he can’t control and deep down he's worried about you and the baby but probably not able to articulate it. This will manifest as him trying to exert even more control over the situation to manage his anxiety. Expect him to argue about you being out in the field with Storm Par, especially if it’s storm season. He'll have 100 different reasons why it's unsafe and won't relax until you're sitting safely in your office.

You’ve been with Scott long enough to understand how he operates, and you know his actions are driven by his desire to keep you and the baby safe and healthy. That doesn't make him less annoying though because as soon as he finds out you're pregnant, he’ll be reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting and diving deep into the latest research. Once he’s armed with all the facts, he’ll obsessively monitor what you’re eating and doing, quoting the book chapter and verse.

Those prenatal vitamins you picked up at CVS? He’ll throw them straight in the trash and tell you to take this fancy brand you’ve never heard of, claiming it’s verified by an independent lab and superior to your drugstore brand.

That cute little mobile you want to hang over the crib? Absolutely not — it’s a strangulation hazard. The old bassinet your aunt wants to give you? That’s going in the trash too because, from an engineering standpoint, it looks structurally unsound and is probably covered in lead paint.

He’ll be annoyingly confident about everything right up until the moment the baby is born. When the doctor hands him his son and he looks down at that tiny, scrunched-up face, all he feels is a wave of panic. How are the two of you supposed to take care of this fragile little thing? This is a person, not a problem to be solved and accounted for.

He’d never outwardly panic, but he knows you can see through him when you say his name softly and reach for his hand.

"Look at me," you'd whisper, smiling at him — tired, sweaty, and beautiful after going through hell to bring his son into the world. You would look so at ease and happy that suddenly Scott would know everything would be okay because you’d be right beside him.

Together, you've got this.

Talk Shop Tuesday

#scott miller #scott miller x reader #scott miller x you #scott twisters #twisters #scott rot #is #scott x you #scott x reader

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tragedybunny · 1 year ago

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Fun Astarion idea:

Tav finds a wish spell (does the Deck of Many Things behind Astarion's back and gets insanely lucky), and offers to use it to cure his Vampirism.

He would probably be annoyed at them for risking that, at least.

This one ended up short and sweet anon, but I didn't want to belabor it because I think it would be gilding the lily.

As requested, Tav draws from the Deck Many Things, Astarion is less than thrilled.

Gambles and Wishes - F!Reader x Astarion

“Astarion,” you pound on the door to your home’s library until you thought it would break.

“I’m still not talking to you,” he shouts back, not even getting close to the door.

It was locked from the inside and you consider an unlocking spell for a moment but stop. The lock was a boundary, and you hated to cross his boundaries, he didn’t get to have any for so long. Instead you opt to groan in frustration. “Please, this isn’t the healthiest way to solve our problems.”

“Neither is lying, but that didn’t stop you,” he shoots back and you cringe because he’s technically right.

“It wasn’t lying so much as not telling. And see, you’re talking to me so why don’t we stop shouting through the door.” To be honest, it was starting to make you nervous, he’d never been angry at you for this long before. Maybe your good intentions had taken things too far. “Please Love, Starry Sky,” your voice shakes.

The noise of the lock opening causes your heart to leap, but you're not sure if it’s dread or elation, so you just stand there, arms crossed around yourself until the door opens. Astarion stares at you with watery red eyes, “is that really how you want this relationship to work?”

“No, you’re right, but the possible reward was too great to deny.” Why can’t he understand, you’d do anything for him?

“So was the risk, you pulled a card from the Deck of Many things. You know magic, you know what could’ve happened.” He’s not shouting anymore, it’s so much worse. He’s barely whispering the words, and the tears are finally starting to spill over. “And you didn’t even consult me, we’re supposed to be equals in this.”

So much for those boundaries you didn’t want to cross, the realization started to eat you up inside. Protecting him wasn’t a good excuse anymore. “I’m so sorry. It’s just that I would risk anything for you and I knew you wouldn’t let me.”

Even amidst all the pain, the two of you find yourselves holding onto each other. “Sunlight, that’s because you always take risks for me. You need to worry more about yourself sometimes.” He sniffles into your shoulder, and you hope his tears are drying as you stroke his hair.

“I know, last one I promise. But I got what I wanted, one Wish spell, we can have the life we thought was impossible.” The life you wanted so badly to give him, the life he deserved.

Stepping back from you, he appraises you seriously. “Are you sure this is what you would use it on? You could have an Empire, become a Goddess. Not that you aren’t already, especially when it comes too- ” he smiles lasciviously.

“Astarion,” playfully you smack his shoulder, “behave yourself. And yes this is the only thing I could think of using it on. I couldn’t wish for anything more than you.”

“You’re still a silly girl who’s too nice to me.” New tears appear in his eyes you notice, but for an entirely different reason. “Well then I accept, on one condition of course.”

“And what is that?”

“You promise you’re stuck with me as long as we both live. I’m not used to being alive of course, I’m going to need someone to keep an eye on me for a long time. And let’s be honest, you’re the most qualified. I don’t think any of our friends would really be able to handle it.”

He’s rambling but you know it’s because he’s nervous, so you lean over and kiss him softly. “Deal. Now let’s make you an un-undead Love.”

#asks #anon asks #requests #astarion #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #astarion x reader #astarion x f!reader #astarion x tav #x reader #baldurs gate 3 fanfic #my fanfic #my writing

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1moreff-creator · 10 days ago

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Okay listen, listen. Eden's Garden CH1 was great and I loved it and I'll make a more detailed analysis post about it at some point. And Eva in particular is fantastic and my favorite character. There's just- There's just a little, little issue I have with her FTEs, and if I don't talk about it I'm gonna explode.

Spoilers for P:EG CH1 and Eva's FTEs.

CW: I am about to be a Massive Fucking Nerd on main.

This post was originally going to be about how Eva's papers, the way she describes them, sound like they kinda suck. But then I realized that the way she describes the Riemann zeta function… is just wrong???? Like, it doesn't converge to- EVA WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING?!?!?!?!

Like, look, I don't think "Eva sucks at writing papers actually” is the conclusion I'm meant to reach after doing her FTEs. I'm also pretty sure the mistakes she makes when describing the Riemann zeta function (henceforth "zeta function” for brevity) are just mistakes on the writers’ part, which is fine because that thing is very confusing.

And to be clear, Eva being bad at writing papers doesn't mean she's actually bad at science. I mean, she apparently solved the goddamn Riemann Hypothesis, and doesn't even think it's that big a deal!

Eva, sad [3rd FTE]: They'll put it on my gravestone: here lies the girl who could barely solve Riemann's stupid hypothesis.

(Thank you Ani from youtube for uploading these things it makes citation so much easier <3)

Girliepop if I solved a problem that's stumped mathematicians for over a hundred years (which carries a million dollar prize btw), you bet your fucking ass I want that on my gravestone! And look, I know that this is not necessarily due to her doing more impressive stuff in mathematics. That it's more so because she's internalized what other people think about her skills, and since a lot of people erroneously believe math is uncool she doesn't think this is as big a deal as it is. But the fact that she managed to solve this thing at all, not to mention at eighteen years old, already puts her in contention for best mathematician of the damn century. And that's incredible, because math is badass.

In short, Eva's cool and a great mathematician. But the way she talks about her other work, the papers she wishes got more recognition, makes me really doubt her actual skill as a writer of these papers. Let me explain.

There are three papers Eva mentions writing, or thinking about writing, across her FTEs. One about literature, another about lightspeed travel, and one about the Riemann zeta function.

Eva [1st FTE]: Earlier this year, I wrote a whole paper on an obscure subgenre of Western speculative fiction… I spent weeks on it, expecting it to receive a lot of attention from literary critics…

Eva [1st FTE]: I could write a research paper on the theoretical possibility of lightspeed travel, but no one would care, because…

Eva [4th FTE]: …I wrote a paper about how you can use tabletop gaming to understand [the Riemann zeta function].

Now, I can't say anything about the literature paper, because she gives no details on it. I also don't know enough about literature to know how long it usually takes to write papers on it, so I'll take her word for it that working for weeks on it is notable.

For the hypothetical paper about the "theoretical possibility of lightspeed travel", I have my doubts, but she also doesn't give enough details about what that paper would entail for me to definitively say anything about it. We'll get back to this one, though.

Meanwhile, the paper she gives the most details on is the Riemann zeta function one, and… yeah that one's trash.

There’s two reasons I say that. One is the technical issue with the description she gives, which basically boils down to “there’s severe inaccuracies in her explanation and also she just straight up gets some things wrong,” and is extremely nerdy and math heavy to explain; and the other is a much more fundamental problem with the very thesis of the paper, which doesn’t require math to explain, but I’ll leave for later.

I’ll start with the technical side and the things she gets wrong about the zeta function. I’ll try to make this accessible for non-math nerds, but fair warning, this is pretty difficult math so I can only do so much. That includes keeping to the tabletop analogy Eva used in the spirit of the thing.

By the way, take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt. I'm a third year Physics major, so while I know way more math than the average person, I am by no means an expert. I am liable to get things wrong. In fact, I actually didn't know anything about the zeta function or the Riemann hypothesis before seeing these FTEs, I just researched them because I got curious about the Riemann hypothesis after seeing it show up in not one, but two fangans I've seen (it has a cameo in DR Despair Time if you're curious). However, even though I'm not an expert, I think I know enough to definitively say Eva's very wrong about a few things.

Lots of math incoming, TL;DR after the next red title

As a refresher, this is a paraphrased version of what she explains.

Eva (Paraphrased) [4th FTE]: Take 1, ½, ⅓, ¼, and so on for infinity, and pretend they are characters in a tabletop game (TTG). An enemy casts a status effect on your denominators so that they are all raised to the power of p, where the value of p is decided by dice roll. Now your characters are 1, 1/2ˆp, 1/3ˆp, etc. For your turn, you add all of your characters together, and that’s the zeta function ζ(p) = 1 + 1/2ˆp + 1/3ˆp + ... What is the value of ζ(p)?

This is good, that sum is indeed the first way to define the zeta function (more on that later), so it's correct. However, she then makes two statements.

Statement 1: If p is higher than 1, then you get a whole number; a number without decimals. ( ζ(p) = a whole number). Statement 2: If p is lower than 1, then you get 0, “an infinite amount of zeroes.” ( ζ(p) = 0).

(You’ll notice I put that last thing in quotes. I’ll get back to it)

Now, I’m going to ignore a few minor inaccuracies which Eva likely makes to simplify the concepts, because they’re not too important. For example; you can’t “add” infinite numbers, that’s not a thing. An infinite series can converge, which is slightly different from arithmetic addition. However, the two things are close enough that, for most people, the distinction doesn’t really matter. In other words, I’m fine with her saying she’s adding infinite numbers together, and similar claims.

There's one inaccuracy I can’t gloss over, though; Eva never tells Damon which dice is rolled to determine the value of p. In math terms, she never tells him the domain of the function (the domain of a function, btw, is the set of values for which the function is defined). Are the values p can take real or complex? Can it be any real/complex, or are there restrictions?

For the unaware, since this is gonna come up, I’ll define a complex number using the TTG analogy. A complex number is a special character born by adding together a real number "r" (one of the numbers you’re all familiar with), and another real number "b" equipped with (math: multiplied by) the Epic Tier item known as the imaginary unit “i”. This Epic item has the property that iˆ2 = -1. So basically a complex number "z" is one where

z = r + bi

where r,b are real and i is the imaginary unit. "r" is known as the real component, and "b" is the imaginary component.

(Note: All real numbers are complex numbers where b=0, but not all complex numbers are real)

In case you’re curious, these things are used in several fields, such as the study of electrical circuits with alternating current, and they appear in relation to the Schrödinger equation- I’m getting off track.

So, what dice does Eva want the opponent to roll to define p? Well, she never says it, but we can infer. She says that p can be “higher than 1,” and that clues us in that she’s probably rolling the dice of real numbers. After all, there’s no universally agreed upon definition of what it means for a complex number to be “higher than” another complex number. Meanwhile, she doesn’t mention any restrictions on what value p can take, so it’s safe to say she’s implying that p can be any real number higher than or lower than 1, aka any real number except maybe 1. Now, the zeta function doesn’t actually have that domain, but we’ll get to that.

For now, let’s analyze her statements assuming p is any real number other than 1. Let’s take a look at the first one.

Statement 1: If p is higher than 1, then ζ(p) is a whole number; a number without decimals.

This is wrong. Just so we’re clear, I could probably prove, with my somewhat limited math knowledge, that this statement can only work if the domain is more restrictive than “all real numbers other than 1” as described previously. It'd have to be defined only in whole numbers, for example.

However, I don’t need to. One of the first lines in the Wikipedia page of the zeta function says that ζ(3) (which is the value you get after “adding all your characters” when p = 3) is an irrational number. That is, among other properties, a number with infinite decimals. Eva could not be more wrong if she tried.

(Btw, yes I'm using Wikipedia as my only source. Not particularly rigorous research on my part, but this is a silly Tumblr post about funny killing game, there's a limit to my insanity)

I don’t even know how this happened, btw. It’s pretty clear this is a goof on the devs’ side (perfectly understandable btw, it took me several reads of the Wikipedia pages for both the zeta function and the Riemann hypothesis to even get them enough to write this post, and as stated I study a lot of math for my career), but I genuinely don’t know where they got the idea from. There’s nothing I could find about whole numbers in relation to the zeta function. There’s connections to prime numbers, which are all whole, but the series doesn't converge to them, the connection is a bit weirder than that. There's also some stuff Euler found about it converging to rational numbers for negative integers, but again, not whole numbers, and not even for real values above 1. So, yeah, no clue.

Anyways, what about the other statement?

Statement 2: If p is lower than 1, then you get 0, “an infinite amount of zeroes.”

This is also obviously wrong. In fact, reader! Can you think of a counterexample which is immediately obvious if you think about it for two seconds? A real number p lower than 1 such that ζ(p) isn't 0?

If you said “zero, because zero always breaks everything in very obvious ways,” you have good intuition! You could have also picked any other real number lower than 1, but those are less obvious.

For 0, the reason it’s so apparent is that any number raised to the power of zero is just 1, so 1 + 1/2ˆ0 + 1/3ˆ0 + … just turns into 1 + 1 + 1 + … and so on for infinity. Very obviously, the series diverges, it “goes to infinity.” This is very different from converging to 0.

And just so we’re clear, the series also diverges for any real value of p lower than 1, though I’ll leave proving that one as an exercise to the reader, with the help that I’ll tell you the infinite series 1 + ½ + ⅓ + ¼ + … also goes to infinity. Again, Eva could not be more wrong if she tried.

So, what went wrong here? Turns out, the way Eva defined the zeta function as an infinite series (a "sum of infinite numbers”) only works when p is a complex number with a real component higher than 1. That’s why it was important for her to say what dice we were rolling to determine p, what the domain of the function defined by the series is. For other numbers, you need to define zeta in different ways.

And what happened to the whole “infinite zeroes” thing? Well, you see, I have a theory. I think the devs must have read that the zeta function had “an infinite amount of zeroes for values of p with a real component lower than 1” (which is true, but doesn’t mean what they think it means), and misinterpreted from there. Fair mistake. I kinda wanna correct it using the TTG analogy, but I’ll leave that for the end of the post because it’s gonna derail the entire thing.

(I got carried away and explained everything I understood about the Riemann zeta function oops)

What you need to know for now; you can do some math tricks to define the zeta function outside of the infinite series Eva described, though a lot of those tricks are way above my pay grade. That way, you can evaluate the function for any complex value of p other than 1. In other words, you can roll different die for p, but it requires redefining what you're doing with that p.

Turns out, in doing that, some funky shit happens, and any time p equals -2n for any n which is a natural number (that is, p = -2 or -4 or -6 or -8, etc.), the zeta function will go to zero. Those values of p are known as the “trivial zeroes” of the function, and are obviously infinite in number. However, note that these trivial zeroes are exclusively negative even integers; there are plenty of real values of p lower than 1 for which the zeta function is not zero, so Eva still isn’t correct at all.

Though, to be clear, there are also zeroes of the function other than the trivial ones. This is actually where the Riemann hypothesis comes in. The hypothesis is that any non-trivial zero of the zeta function has a real component of exactly ½, with the only difference between them being the imaginary component (if you didn't follow, again, more detailed explanation at the bottom of the post). This (in our world) has not been definitively proven to work for every non-trivial zero, though it does work for the first several trillion.

Absurdly nerdy math rant over

So TL;DR, Eva made some pretty big mistakes when talking about the convergence of the zeta function, mainly stemming from not properly defining its domain, but also just straight up getting the convergence wrong. It doesn’t converge exclusively to whole numbers for real numbers above 1, and has to be defined in a different way for real values below 1, not to mention that she never brings up the full function is actually defined for complex numbers other than 1.

Obviously, this all likely stems from the creators not actually understanding the zeta function themselves, which is pretty funny.

But you wanna know what the bigger issue is? That even if Eva had properly explained the zeta function, her paper would still suck ass. Because there’s a much bigger, more fundamental issue with the very thesis it upholds.

I want you to take a step back. Really look past the complex math and weird terms and the contrast between the very serious sounding Riemann zeta function and the somewhat silly concept of a TTG…

And realize that the thesis of the paper Eva describes is “analogies exist.”

She can frame it however she likes, but ultimately, that’s what the point of the paper was. Eva, where the hell did you even get this published? In fact, I think it’s silly for you to say that it’d have been better received if your talent was different, because without it, I don’t see a world where this shit could even be submitted to any journal with even a modicum of self respect!

And look, she’s not wrong. I get her point, that mathematicians often don’t put in enough effort to communicate their work to the layman, and would benefit from explaining things in more creative ways. That’s cool. But that’s the kind of thing you would write for, like, an article or something.

But a paper is specifically meant for research. Calling this thing a paper almost feels insulting to mathematicians. Like the concept of using analogies to explain math is an unprecedented discovery that required actual research to figure out. Unless this paper was also the one where Eva solved the Riemann hypothesis (which God I hope that was a different paper), there's no new information being presented here. It's at best a personal opinion piece, which is not what scientific papers are for.

Am I silly for getting hung up on the wording of this being described as a paper instead of an article or opinion piece or whatever? Well, this entire post is silly, but I don't think it's because of that, because words mean things. And a scientific paper carries certain connotations that do not align with what Eva describes.

And this little issue casts doubt in her general skill as a paper writer. That's why I'm a bit skeptical about the paper she mentions about the "theoretical possibility of lightspeed travel.” Because, quite frankly, that paper topic sounds… meaningless? Like a bunch of technobabble?

Like, what exactly are you discussing about lightspeed travel? In fact, what are you actually referring to when you say "lightspeed travel"? Matter approaching lightspeed, or reaching or even exceeding lightspeed? The latter two are impossible according to current scientific consensus, btw. Or is she discussing a particular trick to get something from point A to point B in less time than it would take for light to cover that distance? There are papers discussing stuff like that, even if all the mechanisms are also thought to be impossible by consensus. And regardless of what she means by "lightspeed travel", what does she mean "theoretical possibility” of it? Like, genuinely, I have no clue. Is she speculating on whether or not it's possible? Is she speculating on the properties such travel would have? Is she proposing a theoretical method to do it? Is she doing something else entirely? The premise of the paper is too vague, is my point.

This worries me because… well, to put it bluntly, experts in related fields (such as mathematics) attempting to make cool sounding physics theories (such as a paper on the "theoretical possibility of lightspeed travel", whatever that means) which are completely wrong and nonsensical is a real, observable phenomenon in our world. Check out Angela Collier's "physics crackpots: a 'theory’” to find out more. And also check out the rest of her youtube channel it's great.

What Eva is doing with that paper honestly sounds remarkably close to what Angela describes there. In fact, let's check out whether or not Eva's hypothetical paper fits any of the four points Angela brings up to spot a crackpot theory.

1. “Addresses THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS in physics.”

By this, Angela means that the theory addresses a problem or topic that anyone with a passing interest in physics knows is a big deal. Things like dark matter, gravity, black holes, and yes, "lightspeed travel.” You're not going to see anyone with a crackpot theory on the equation of state of real gases or Eddy currents, because by the point you know what those things are in enough depth to be interested in them, you probably also know enough to determine what a good physics theory is and what isn't. Eva's paper fits this point, but that doesn't necessarily mean Eva is a crackpot physicist, right?

2 and 4. “Lacking mathematical rigor, experimental data, etc.” and “They are not physics theories”

I grouped these two because it's impossible for me to know whether Eva's paper would actually fit these points or not. She doesn't give enough details for me to say. I can tell you for sure it's not gonna have experimental data, but since it's theoretical physics, that's fine. So, we can maybe give her the benefit of the doubt? As long as she doesn't fit the last point too well maybe-

3. “Respond with anger, claim physics establishment has blacklisted them, cite Galileo/Einstein/etc."

Oh no.

Eva [1st FTE]: I could write a research paper on the theoretical possibility of lightspeed travel, but no one would care…

Oh no chat. She might actually be a crackpot physicist.

It doesn't help that her mentality in general is actually very in line with the mentality described in the Angela video mentioned above. That because she's a smart person (which she is; again, solved the damn Riemann hypothesis), she should be able to easily become recognized and respectable in any field she takes interest in. But that isn't how the world works. There's a reason people spend years of their life studying literature, physics, or mathematics, just to truly get a grasp of each discipline individually.

Ok, but, like, what's my point? Am I going to include her misunderstanding of the zeta function and the possibility of her being a "crackpot physicist” in any character analysis? No, of course not. You're very clearly meant to think Eva is genuinely skilled in every field she approaches, because this is a fangan and Ultimates can bend the limits of humanity to fit a narrative. I'm perfectly willing to accept that Eva solved the Riemann hypothesis, as you've seen throughout this post, even though I'd be highly skeptical of anyone making that same claim in the real world, "Ultimate” or not. The same way I'd accept that a fictional character of any kind could manage to accelerate a particle to exactly lightspeed, even though I'd immediately call bullshit if someone claimed to do it in real life. The standard for believability is different for fictional characters than real people, basically.

Really, when you boil it down, I only take issue with the things Eva says because I'm genuinely passionate about the topics she mentions, and because she gives enough details about her work for me to see the cracks in the writers’ knowledge of them. I'm assuming this is a common issue with any fangan that tries to really explain what being an "Ultimate” in a particular field entails, because no one is actually well versed enough in sixteen different talents to actually say that for sure. That's why Eva off-handedly mentioning that she solved the Riemann hypothesis is much more effective as a way to establish her skill than trying and failing to get her to actually explain the zeta function.

All in all, this is just a purely self-indulgent post for me to vent about issues I have with the way the writers tried to convey Eva's expertise. Feel free to completely ignore this for character analysis, because I sure will. I just needed to talk about it because I would explode if I didn't. Anyways, hope you enjoyed! If you made it this far, you deserve a function named specifically after you! See y-!

Oh right I almost forgot.

My Own Explanation of the Riemann Zeta Function Using the TTG Analogy

(Explained by someone with little more than Wikipedia access, take all this with a grain of salt)

Think of finding the zeroes of a function as a boss fight. You go up to them, and you cast a spell, generally in the form of a number, such that the function becomes zero when you cast it. For example, the Easy Function

f(x) = 2x - 6

can be defeated by casting “3”, since 2x3 - 6 = 0.

Every function also has a “domain”, which is a set of spells you can actually cast against it. For example, since 1/0 is undefined, the Medium Function g(x) = 1/x has a domain of all complex numbers except 0. Casting 0 against g has no effect. You need a special spell, “limit when x tends to infinity” (or negative infinity) to defeat it.

The zeta function is a Legendary Boss, defined by the infinite series ζ(s) = 1 + 1/2^s +1/3^s + …

(I changed p to s for a reason trust the process)

Many mathematicians had tried to defeat it before, but it seemed futile*. Its domain was thought to be all real numbers higher than 1 (they originally didn't think to use complex numbers against it), but no matter what number was picked, that first term was too powerful. Even casting “limit when s tends to infinity” only got zeta down to 1. Nothing in its domain seemed to work.

Until Riemann arrived.

The zeta function chuckled, thinking this one to be like all the many others before him. But the legendary mage Riemann had many a trick the zeta function hadn't seen before. Tricks to make make the domain of the function larger, so that new Number Spells could be cast against it. Where everyone else had only ever attempted to cast real numbers against this boss, he wouldn't be satisfied with that. Without warning, he cast the first of many powerful spells needed to do what needed to be done.

"Domain Expansion; Proof of Complexity"

Since you already knew this part, I'll skip the proof, but basically, Reimann quickly showed that the infinite series which defined the zeta function for real numbers higher than one actually worked for any complex number with a real component higher than one.

The zeta function was impressed, but unconcerned. It knew damn well there was still no spell in this new domain which could possibly defeat it. "Nice try, but I'm not scared of some imaginary unit” it claimed.

“I'm aware,” claimed Reimann. He raised his hands again, his mana swelling, and the zeta function frowned. “But you're mistaken if you think this is the end.”

Reimann looked at the Legendary Boss in front of him, and cast the following, powerful incantation, with the help of the runes described below.

"Domain Expansion; Analytic Continuation"

To truly defeat the zeta function, one must understand the concept of an analytic continuation. This is where I falter, for I myself don’t understand what the fuck that is. However, what I've been able to gather is that the function

𝜂(s) / (1 - 2/2ˆs) where 𝜂(s) = 1/1ˆs - 1/2ˆs + 1/3ˆs - …

is equal to the zeta function in the zeta function's domain, but is also defined outside of it. In particular, it's defined for any complex number with a positive real component, except for the points where

1 - 2/2ˆs = 0

(can't be dividing by zero after all!). That last thing excludes 1, for example.

Basically, think of the spell "Domain Expansion; Analytical Continuation” as a shapeshifting spell that transforms the zeta function from the previous definition:

ζ(s) = 1 + 1/2ˆs + 1/3ˆs + … for s complex numbers with a real component higher than 1.

to now being defined as:

ζ(s) = 𝜂(s) / (1 - 2/2ˆs) for the previously described new domain.

That way, its domain is expanded to include complex numbers with a real component between 0 and 1, aside from those where 2/2ˆs = 1.

But of course, Reimann wouldn't be satisfied with that. The next spell was simpler, but worthwhile nonetheless.

"Domain Expansion; Limiting Singularity Removal"

See, turns out, all the points "z” where the analytic continuation was undefined, other than 1, where removable singularities (I think? I don't actually know much about complex functions :v), which means the spell "limit when s tends to z” returns a finite number l. That way, you can define ζ(z) = l for all of these removable singularities, expanding the domain of the zeta function to all complex numbers with a positive real component, other than 1.

Don't worry if you don’t know what a limit is or you didn't follow this part, it's not too important for this. After all, that last spell didn't worry the zeta function. What had truly taken it aback was the analytic continuation, which suddenly exposed a few weak spots of the zeta function to the world. Now, Reimann could defeat it once and for all, as long as he found the right spell in the new domain.

However, the zeta function was a Legendary Boss for a reason. "Fancy tricks, but it won't be easy to find something to actually defeat me, you know,” it bluffed, hoping intimidation would work. Foolish hope.

"Oh, certainly,” Reimann agreed readily, smiling. The zeta function was confused for a moment, until it realized something horrifying.

Reimann's mana was swelling again. He wasn't done. And for the first time since it's run-in with Euler all those years back, the zeta function felt true fear.

“It won't just be easy,” Reimann smirked. “It will be trivial.”

"Domain Expansion; Functional Equation"

This is another point where the math is beyond me, but I'll try to explain. Basically, Reimann proved that that equality up there holds true as long as s is a complex number with a real component strictly higher than 0 and strictly lower than 1.

However, you'll notice that if you take s as a complex number with a real component equal to or lower than 0 (other than 0 itself), then the right side of the equation is actually well defined, because 1 - s is a complex number with a positive real component (and not equal to 1 unless s is exactly 0), meaning ζ(1 - s) is well defined. You also don't run into issues with any of the other factors of that equation, including the Gamma function (𝚪). What that means is that this equation can be used to extend the zeta function's domain to all complex numbers other than 0 and 1.

Think of this domain expansion as a shapeshifting curse. If you cast a complex number with a real component strictly higher than 0 (other than 1), then the zeta function defends by turning into either the analytic continuation from before:

ζ(s) = 𝜂(s) / (1 - 2/2ˆs)

or the limit for any values where 1 - 2/2ˆs.

Meanwhile, if you cast a number s with a real component equal to or lower than 0 (other than 0 itself), then the zeta function shapeshifts to be:

ζ(s) = 2ˆs 𝜋ˆ(s-1) sin(s𝜋/2) 𝚪(1-s) ζ(1-s)

The final step is yet another Domain Expansion; Limiting Singularity Removal on 0, where ζ(0) = -½. Again not really important for us.

In any case, Riemann had done it. Five consecutive domain expansions, so that the zeta function's domain now included all complex numbers except 1. The zeta function was on its last legs, all that was needed was the final touch. For the inexperienced, you might think finding a zero would still be difficult, but the truly expert mages among you might have already noticed the weak spot in the functional equation.

The sine function. A Common Enemy which goes to 0 whenever it's attacked by a whole number equipped with the Legendary Tier item 𝜋. And when a complex number with a negative real component is cast against the zeta function, sin(s𝜋/2) becomes one of the factors.

"You know what this means, don't you, zeta?” Riemann asked. And the zeta function couldn't muster a response before the legendary mage cast his final spell. "You lose.”

"Simple Spell; Negative Even Integer"

-2, -4, -8, etc. Any even integer s causes s/2 to be a whole number, so sin(s𝜋/2) goes to zero. And since it's multiplying everything else, the entire zeta function goes to zero. These negative even integers are known as the zeta function's "trivial zeroes", and because there are infinite negative even integers, it can be said that the zeta function has an infinite amount of zeroes.

However, just because the Riemann zeta function had been defeated, doesn't mean Reimann was satisfied. See, Riemann noticed that there were other values which could defeat the zeta function, and weren't negative even integers. These are the zeta function's non-trivial zeroes. And he noticed that all of these zeroes followed a pattern, so he tried to cast a Prophecy Spell.

A Prophecy Spell (or a theorem, in real math terms) is one that makes it so that, when certain conditions are met, something happens without fail. To cast a Prophecy Spell, you must prove it, which means using other prophecy spells, runes and unbreakable laws (axioms) to certify that it's a valid prophecy.

I'll give you an example in case you're not used to the concept of mathematical proof, and cast the Prophecy Spell “if b is a real number, then b0 = 0". To prove it, I'll use two axioms (these are the building blocks of mathematics, and don't need to be proven because they just Are).

1) 0 + c = c (0 is neutral to addition).

2) b(c + d) = bc + bd (Distributive Property)

Now, observe the following:

1) b(c + 0) = b(c + 0) [Trivially true.]

2) bc = bc + b0 [0's neutrality used on the left, distributive on the right]

3) 0 = b0 [Because bc = bc, you can nullify the terms]

I chose this because it happens to be the reason you can't divide by 0. Division is formally defined as multiplication with the reciprocal, so to divide by 0 you must first define its reciprocal 1/0. 1/0 would be defined as a number such that 0 x 1/0 = 1. But we just proved there's no real (or complex) number for which that can be true, so 1/0 isn't a number, thus is undefined.

In any case, now you know what's needed to cast a Prophecy Spell. However, Riemann couldn't finish the Prophecy spell about the non-trivial zeroes. He couldn't find proof or a counterexample to refute it. And so, his unfinished Prophecy Spell went down in history… as the Riemann Hypothesis.

“All non-trivial zeroes of the Riemann zeta function have a real component of exactly ½.”

Although it's been proven to hold true for trillions of non-trivial zeroes, it has never been properly proven or refuted, so the Riemann Hypothesis remains… unsolved.

God that was nerdy and cringy as hell. It was also super fun to write so I don't care :D

*Look, for the purpose of the post, I'm saying Riemann did all this shit and is the first one to find a value for which the zeta function becomes zero. This is likely not historically accurate. I'm just doing it so the explanation flows better. This should only be taken as an explanation of the function itself, and not the history behind it.

#p:eg #project: eden's garden #eva tsunaka #this post got way outta hand btw #it was supposed to be a silly little thing. like 1k words max #but then i blacked out and there were 5.7k words how did this happen #so very sorry to my mathphobic followers but i saw math in a fangan and got over excited #and then eva stabbed me in the back by getting Everything Wrong #i love her but oh my god this bothered me more than it should have #cw math #(?)

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hmsdoodlin · 19 days ago

Note

TAKE 2! ACTION!

the mind control has worked! i humbly request to listen to your interpretation of soul!

bonus! your art is scrumptious. delicious. exquisite even >:)

(Long rambles under the cut, I get a bit off topic and go all over the place. Once again please don’t kill me for this, Soul is very hard for me to connect with and understand. I’m always down to hear different opinions!)

First and foremost Soul will always be a tragic character to me, he’s just as much of a victim as Heart and Mind.

I think his loud boisterous personality is a mask, or at least a dramatized version of himself he uses to cope with what’s going on around him. Dream, Never Meant to Know, and Spring and a Storm all paint a picture of someone who’s really fucking tired but wants to keep trying. While Mucka Blucka, The Soul Eclectic, and The Bidding are him putting up an act, or at the very least amplifying his personality.

He’s honest to himself and assumingly the audience, but whenever he’s with his two thirds it’s like he has to be some sort of indifferent eccentric ring leader.

He’s quite literally driven mad by their bickering but loves Whole (and the two goobers) enough to keep trying over and over again. There’s a way he can make this work! He just needs more time.

I would like to get into my personal interpretation of Soul in RoE before we get into headcanons though.

I think Souls laughing is a trauma response. I think he’s so absolutely flabbergasted that such a thing happened he can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all. I don’t think he got genuine enjoyment out of imprisoning Heart, emotions were high and he was so incredibly disappointed/upset.

As much as I love Heart and Soul I think Soul siding with Mind isn’t cruel or a reason to vilify him. Heart could have killed all three of them and Whole, he’s allowed to be pissed.

Shout out to a good friend who brought that interpretation to my attention. she cooked.

——————

Time for relashionship headcanons/dynamics. (Very long, not the most coherent I apologize.)

I try to keep Soul morally grey. He’s not evil but he doesn’t go about things the best way either. He’s unintentionally selfish and has trouble connecting with Heart and Mind.

Soul loves them! He truly does. But after so many loops and arguments he’s subconsciously adapted how to best deal with them in Cacophony and has trouble breaking down those perceptions.

At his worst I think he sees his relationship with the other two as transactional. Heart offers an olive branch for when Soul is feeling overwhelmed and needs emotional support. Mind is there for ‘serious’ discussions and how to solve certain problems. He struggles to see them as anything past that, and gets so tired he only talks to them when he feels he needs to for his sake or their own.

Soul goes to Heart for emotional support, they have very emotionally charged conversations and very rarely delve into serious talks or problems. Heart is too ‘irrational’ for any of that. A part of Souls mind tells him that Heart is too much of a liability for any situations like this, it’s best to leave him out of it. So instead he goes to Mind for those things, essentially using Heart purely for his companionship.

(Heart knows this and feels infantilized/betrayed but he also takes great pride in being Souls confidante and will hold it over Minds head.)

Soul goes to Mind for serious problems and topics. I like to think their conversations are weirdly professional. He can’t talk to Mind about ‘emotional’ things because he would dismiss them and Heart is much more understanding. Heart can provide comfort, Mind cannot. Soul unintentionally uses Mind purely for his logic and level headedness.

(Mind knows this and takes pride in the fact that Soul doesn’t bother him with such things. He holds the ‘mature’ conversations over Hearts head. Soul respects him more than Heart, he trusts him more than Heart. But he feels a weird way whenever he sees the two of them being close, he unknowingly yearns for that connection and wants that kind of love too.)

(Oh boy my Soul and Mind are a bit fucked up.)

Soul is unaware of these things, too caught up with everything else to recognize that he himself may be contributing to the problem.

I see Souls mediator role in one of two ways.

1. He’s apathetic to both of them and tries to stay neutral, he can’t have favorites after all. This pushes everyone further apart and preventing all of them from having any semblance of normalcy or comfort.

2. Soul tries to play both sides, being nice to both of them and regularly trying to forge a connection/keeps things going like normal. But in doing so he causes a rift further between Heart and Mind, because once he sides with someone in an argument the other takes immediate offense.

I personally prefer 2. But both are good.

Mind and Soul have an awkward, professional relationship. Mind yearns to be as close to him as Heart is and feels ostracized but is too prideful to admit it. Soul has been turned down everytime he tries to connect with Mind on a more personal level so he just doesn’t really try anymore. Soul believes that Mind hates him, Mind believes that Soul hates him and that he can never be good enough. (This is short because I want to delve into them deeper in the future.)

Heart and Soul have a sort of artificially close relationship in Cacophony. Heart is easiest to connect with on a personal level and therefore they’re a lot closer. But they unintentionally use eachother to get what they want. Maybe Heart takes their relationship far too seriously? Believing himself to be Souls favorite and feeling especially hurt and betrayed whenever Soul doesn’t side with him. Heart takes it very personally. He’s jealous of Mind and Souls relationship, he wishes he was a valued member of the team like Mind, he wishes Soul took him more seriously. But at the end of the day when he’s at his lowest and Soul offers comfort he feeds into the codependency because he can’t get that love anywhere else. They use each other emotionally and would rather ignore the communication issues for a single moment of peace. He uses words like manipulate and tricks when referring to Soul siding with Mind because the idealized version of Soul in his head could never do that to him.

Random scenario:

Soul and Heart go outside to admire the moon and stars together. Because of Hearts blindness he asks Soul to describe them to him. Soul goes into great detail about everything he sees and how bright everything is.

But Heart knows that he’s lying. He can smell the incoming rain and how sticky the grass and air feels. The sky is covered in clouds, he’s sure even his moon is hidden. But he’ll indulge in the fantasy for the night, he doesn’t want Soul to feel bad. And in turn Soul will think he can get away with lying about certain things and unintentionally takes advantage of Hearts blindness. It’s all with good intentions! But it harms their relationship in the long run.

————-

I apologize that most of this delves into Heart and Mind and strays a bit away from Soul. I get most of my enjoyment from him with his interactions with the others and therefore I have the most to say about their relationships.

*checks notes* I hope this made sense. I spent a long ass time writing and deleting this thing so I’m ready to throw it into the wind forever. Feel free to discuss and ask any questions though!

#hmsdoodles #doodle rambles #this is a mess I’m so sorry 💀#chonnys charming chaos compendium #cccc #chonny jash #cj soul #cccc soul

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love-hs28 · 7 months ago

Text

You're gonna do just fine, I promise.

Summary: Chemistry class had never been your strong-suit, and an upcoming test leads you to break down while trying to study an impossible unit. gn!reader cw: reader has panic attack 1.1k words comfort & fluff Posted on: 6-20-24

You and Eddie were hanging out in your room one autumn evening, both trying your hardest to study for an upcoming chemistry test. Your record player spun softly in the background and the only lights illuminating your room were the lamps on your desk and nightstand, and the string lights that hung on your walls.

You didn’t struggle in school by any means, but you still had to actually put in effort to keep your grades up. You probably pushed yourself a bit too hard sometimes, because there was no reason to not be satisfied with A’s and B’s as your average scores. But, for some reason only known by God or whatever higher power there might be, this current chemistry unit was giving you absolute. hell. Eddie, for once, seemed to be getting the hang of things pretty quickly and had finished his study sheet before you had the chance to get halfway done. Chemistry had always come easy for him, most likely because he actually found it interesting and easy to pay attention to. And, despite what many people might think, Eddie was really very smart when he wanted to be.

After offering to help you and you refusing the help due to the determination to figure it out on your own, Eddie retreated to your bed to continue reading his well-loved copy of Lord of the Rings while you stayed hunched over on your desk.

Too many minutes go by of you trying to solve a specific word problem, and you’re afraid if it isn't solved in the next attempt you’re going to drop out of school completely. You let out a sigh and rub your hands over your face. Eddie, lying on his stomach with his elbows propping himself up, looks up from his book.

“Sweetheart, that’s the third time you’ve sighed in the last minute. Maybe it's time for a break.”

You sigh and frustratedly shuffle through your papers and textbook.

“These fucking problems are killing me, Eddie. It’s like I understand what’s going on and how to solve it but forget what I’ve read a minute later. I just- I can’t fail this test, Ed. I can’t.”

Eddie moves to sit up against your headboard. “Y/n, you’re literally the smartest person I know. I promise you, you are not going to fail the test. And hey, even if you did, I’m sure your gpa will still be, what? 3.999…”

You let out another frustrated sigh and let your head fall into your hands, appreciative that he's trying to make you laugh and lighten the mood, but unable to shake the dreadful feeling.

“I’m serious, Eddie! It’s fucking stressing me out and I just- there’s no way I’m going to learn or retain all of this by Friday.”

You can feel your heartbeat start to quicken and breathing is becoming a bit more difficult as your chest begins to tighten. You rub a hand across your chest, being a bit rough, trying to coax out that icky feeling.

“Hey, don’t freak out, y/nn. You’re gonna do great. I can try my best to help you and we’ll figure it out together okay? I promise, don’t stress about it, it’s gonna be fine.”

You rest your head in your hands on the desk and try to calm yourself down. You can feel tears forming in your eyes, slowly beginning to fall down your face. You try and take a few deep breaths but it doesn't seem to help much.

“It’s more than that, though. It’s just, everything is so stressful right now and I can’t- I don’t know what to do.” You sob into your hands, the stress of the past couple weeks feeling overpowering and impossible to hold in anymore.

“Sweetheart,” Eddie sets his book face down on your bed and gets up to walk over to you. He gently removes your hands from your face, turning the chair away from the desk and kneeling so he’s level with you. You’re really struggling to breathe now, shaking your head as he tries to hold your hands.

“Baby, shhh. It’s okay. I’m right here, look at me. It’s okay.” He softly guides your face to look at him. Your ears are ringing and your eyes won’t focus so you tightly squeeze them shut. You shake your head, moving out of Eddie’s hold, folding over and covering your face again.

“I can’t- Eddie- I can’t. Fuck, I can’t breathe.” Air is coming in and out of your lungs now only in short gasps and whimpers, making your words sound like they hurt to get out, and they kind of do. Your whole body shakes as you repeatedly shake your head, trying to get rid of the foggy and panicky feelings.

“Sweetheart, calm down. You’re gonna pass out if you don’t slow your breathing angel, look at me. Follow my breaths.”

Eddie gently takes one of your hands and puts it over his chest, taking deep, exaggerated breaths for you to follow. His other hand rests on the side of your face, trying to get your eyes to focus on him. It works, and after a moment of following his breathing patterns you can feel your heart and gasps start to calm down. You don’t know how many minutes pass, but your eyes never leave his as you continue to breathe together.

Once your breathing is manageable and you can finally take in and let out a deep breath, your face crumples and you break down, all of the suppressed emotions of the past week coming out now that you don’t have to worry about whether or not you’re going to make yourself pass out. You sob, hiccups and everything.

“Oh, angel,” Eddie gently guides you off of the chair and into his lap on the floor, you leaning all of your weight into him and holding him as close as possible. Your grip stays on his shirt, soaking it with tears. He rubs your back and strokes your hair, whispering non-stop comforting words into your neck.

“I know, I know. It’s okay, love. I got you. I got you. You’re okay. It’s gonna be okay.”

It takes you a few minutes to calm down one final time, and Eddie gently pulls back and puts his hands on your face so you can look at him. Wiping the remaining tears away with his thumbs, he kisses you on your forehead. You rub your eyes, suddenly feeling very tired from exerting the entirety of the energy you had left.

"I promise you," Eddie's voice is a soft whisper as he runs a hand through your hair. "Everything is going to be okay. We're gonna figure out how to make it all work, yeah? Like we always do. Promise." He kisses your forehead again, and you lean into him, taking another deep breath.

“Let’s take a break from studying, yeah? We can watch a movie or something. Get your mind off of everything. Or just lay together, whatever you want.” You look up and his thumbs rub loving strokes on your cheeks, eyes looking at you in an attempt to show you just how much he cares and wants to help you feel better.

You lean into his touch and glance over to your bed where his book lies open. “Can you read to me?”

Eddie beams and gives you a sweet kiss. “I thought you’d never ask. I would love to.”

He picks you up, making you giggle as he takes you to the bed, and you lie down so he’s against the headboard and you’re lying on his chest between his legs, the book in front of both of you. He reads to you while you fidget with his hands and rings and he plays with your hair. You eventually fall asleep as he’s reading, finally able to relax, his sleep following shortly after.

a/n: hope you enjoyed!! my first Eddie fic! hopefully more to come soon 🤞haven't posted in a while and I would looooveeee any recommendations! this isn't proofread so pls ignore any mistakes 🙏 love ya'll and couldn't be more grateful for the love the last few fics have gotten. as always, pls leave requests/asks/whateva. love ya! <3

#Eddie Munson x reader #Eddie Munson x gn!reader #Eddie Munson x fem!reader #Eddie Munson fit #Eddie Munson imagine #Eddie Munson fanfic #Eddie Munson blurb #Eddie Munson one shot #stranger things fic #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfic #Eddie Munson fluff #Eddie Munson comfort #Eddie Munson x you

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firelxdykatara · 10 months ago

Note

I too ship Zutara and think they should have been canon. Although for me it's important to know how such a rewrite would go down. I tried to think, and I'm lost.

After Mai betrayed Azula for him, will he just go "sorry, not interested"? He isn't obligated to date her because of this, but her redemption hinges on Zuko and I don't see it being satisfying if he ends up rejecting her after this.

I thought the solution would be to rewrite her arc in boiling rock to make her have a moral realization, but then the problem with Maiko is practically solved. Their relationship wasn't salvaged by her redemption because last time they talked, Mai still didn't understand what's wrong with the Fire Nation and only changed because she loved Zuko. So how do you make it both satisfying & logical?

With Kataang the problem is the Chakras. The problem with the original (in my opinion) is that after he opened his chakra, letting go of his attachment to Katara, he's still attached (forcing a kiss on eip). Should TCoD get rewritten so that Azula shoots him before he opens it? Then why wouldn't he just open it later? Maybe the chakra would be locked so he feels as though he doesn't need to overcome his attachment just yet. In that situation, how would his chakra even unlock? The stone thing felt like nonsense, so how would I do it?

So yeah I have no idea how to approach this. How would you? (Thanks)

I've been rotating this ask in the back of my head like a rotisserie chicken for a few days--it's interesting because I don't generally stop to think like, how would I write them out of these relationships, I either ignore the relationships completely (which isn't hard, they were barely footnotes in the cartoon) or play a little bit with jealous exes or something. Thinking about like, In A Perfect World where Bryke wasn't in charge of ATLA post-canon (because if zutara had been canon, you can be sure they would've made us regret it) is interesting, and I do have thoughts on how I'd handle their relationships in a rewrite.

(this got long, so the rest is beneath the cut)

Assuming you mostly want to keep canon intact, I think maiko would be the easiest to work around, given how little relevance their relationship has in canon. The problem with maiko as an endgame ship is that it was not set up that way--if it had been, it would not have begun entirely off-screen and their whole relationship would not have been a study in misery and utter inability to connect emotionally. His relationship with Mai was there to showcase just how much he had changed and how little he fit into the life he had been so sure he wanted more than anything since his banishment. It worked very well to highlight Zuko's growth--how that contrasted to Mai's lack of it and why she could not understand him even at his most open and vulnerable--and did not work nearly so well when she was shoved back with him in the epilogue, after he'd quite literally forgotten her existence (he never mentions her again after Boiling Rock, not even to say a word of mourning, considering he'd have every reason to believe she was killed for defying his sister).

I don't think you can fix this by giving Mai some moral realization, because there simply is no room for it. As @araeph says in the essay I linked:

As a character, Mai is very useful to the story during Zuko’s return, because she represents everything that Zuko gains by sticking by his father. A girl who cares about him; the ability to indulge her; the authority he has over others at the palace; we see it all in his interactions with Mai. But this makes Mai a tether to a life he has long outgrown. Her function is not to advance Zuko’s character development, but to obstruct it, which also unfortunately means that Mai gaining a full understanding of Zuko’s trials would be disadvantageous to the story. If she knew everything about him and still wanted him to stay, it would give Zuko more cause than he should have to remain in the Fire Nation, but if she knew and encouraged him to leave and join the Avatar, it would rob Zuko of the triumph of making this decision on his own. In other words, there are good narrative reasons for keeping Mai in the dark; it just doesn’t make their relationship any stronger.

The seeds of a genuine redemption arc (one that includes some sort of moral realization and change to her moral framework) for Mai would have to have been planted far earlier than five episodes from the end of the series, but doing so would have of necessity detracted from Zuko's own character arc and the realizations that he makes despite his attachment to Mai (or more specifically to their relationship, which I feel like he was clinging to more out of a sense of abject loneliness he couldn't shake rather than genuine feelings and emotional connection).

So, in my mind, since we're tackling this with an eye towards getting rid of maiko with the fewest ripples to the overall story anyway, the easiest way to do this would be make one slight change to the end of the Boiling Rock two-parter--have Ty Lee (who had always been the least gung-ho of the trio about bowing to Azula's whims and had to be textually threatened into joining her in the first place) save Zuko's life, and then have Mai (who showed the most genuine affection for Ty Lee anyway) save Ty Lee. I love Zuko more than I fear you always fell flat for me as some epic declaration of love, anyway, since a) Zuko is not around to hear it, and b) unlike Ty Lee, she never showed much fear of Azula to begin with, so it wasn't a very high bar to clear. It was a cool line that was entirely unearned, and I don't think it would be missed, there would be some cute mailee crumbs this way, and a throwaway line of getting them released from the prison after the war ended could wrap up their presence in the story pretty nicely.

Now, kataang is a little trickier, if only because the last leg of Aang's character arc is almost completely derailed by his refusal to let go of his possessive attachment to Katara, to the point where he never naturally reopens his chakras, he has to have the Rock of Destiny hit him in just the right place, and the deus ex lionturtle there to give him a way out of having to make a hard moral choice. (I've maintained for years that if you work the final act of your main character's overall arc in such a way that it could have been solved by one good session with a chiropractor, something got fucked along the way.)

The thing about Aang's chakras is that, narratively, his whole thing with Guru Pathik and leaving his training early to save his friends was basically his version of Luke running away from his training with Yoda on Degobah because of his Force vision, only to find out that his friends were in the process of rescuing themselves and then losing his hand because he hadn't completed the most crucial part of his training. What's missing, therefore, from the last act of Aang's character arc, is the return.

See, in Star Wars, Luke pretty explicitly makes the wrong choice when he chooses to prioritize saving his friends over attaining enlightenment and fully mastering the Force. It was the only choice he could have made, but it was still the wrong one--because, like Aang, his friends did not actually need him to save them, he actually almost makes it harder for them to get away by requiring them to save him because, like Aang, he loses a battle in a very critical way. This was a lesson he desperately needed to learn, and it is clear he has learned it by the time he makes it back to Degobah and witnesses the end of Yoda's life, his own enlightenment having already been reached.

But Aang never goes back to the Guru.

And the text refuses to allow us to sit with the fact that he made the wrong choice in prioritizing his attachment to Katara over his ability to master the Avatar State. He is actually narratively vindicated about it, because the plot bends itself into a pretzel so that he doesn't have to spend any time during the last book trying to reopen his chakras and regain access to the Avatar State, handed both in the final battle with no excess effort on his part, and handed the girl into the bargain. (The girl who never even wanted him, so far as we can tell from all the lack of cues she gave him that she actually returned his feelings.)

And I think this could have been solved with a few scattered scenes. Let Katara actually have some agency in her own romantic relationship (or lack thereof), insofar as noticing Aang's advances and clueing the audience in to how she actually feels. Let Aang struggle with the fact that he can't reach the Avatar State, that his mastery of the elements is in limbo because he can't access his full power, rather than ignoring all of this until the end of the show. If we're trying to keep the shape of the last season roughly the same, let Katara confront Aang about the invasion kiss.

This would have been the perfect time to establish that Katara actually does feel some type of way about Aang prior to the epilogue, and it could have saved us from the exceedingly cringey EIP kiss that Aang never apologized for. How it comes across now, of course, is that Katara basically pretends it never even happened, to the point where she doesn't even know what Aang is talking about during EIP until he reminds her--the death knell for any shot their relationship had at looking requited, because I can tell you, as someone who's been a teenage girl, if someone I had conflicted but burgeoning romantic feelings for had kissed me, I would not have completely forgotten about it only a few weeks later--and we never get any indication as to what she actually felt about the kiss (which was not mutual, despite what Aang's dialogue in the EIP scene implies) except for the fact that she looked away and frowned afterwards. (A change mandated by Bryke, who wanted to leave her feelings completely ambiguous; the original storyboards had her smiling to herself.)

So, with an eye towards wrapping up Aang's puppy love crush and establishing Katara's distinct lack of romantic feelings for him, have her talk to him about the kiss. A good frame of reference for this would be Meng's conversation with Aang in "The Fortuneteller", where she finally realizes that he doesn't like her in the same way she likes him. Katara and Aang's conversation about the invasion kiss could be a callback to this, with Aang having some important realizations--that just because Katara doesn't share his feelings doesn't mean she loves him any less, and just because he can't have her the way he wanted doesn't mean he has to love her any less, that she doesn't belong to him but that's ok, because she's still his family and they'll always have each other's backs. Which could have functioned well in helping him take another step towards unblocking his chakras. Going back to the Guru directly may not have worked, since by this point in the story we're hurtling towards the final confrontation and Sozin's Comet, but let Aang reflect on what the Guru told him with new understanding granted him by his experiences throughout the first half of the season.

To keep the stakes high and up the suspense, obviously, he shouldn't have fully unlocked his chakras and the AS before the final fight, but the seeds could be planted--little moments like a talk with Katara about the invasion kiss, maybe a little more empathy and understanding from him about why Katara needs closure in TSR, etc--and then, during the final fight, rather than hand him all the answers on a silver platter, have him almost lose. He still can't go full Avatar, he's out of time, he still doesn't know exactly what to do about Ozai given his own pacifism and desire to preserve that part of his culture--he tries to fight but he's pretty quickly overpowered. Idk how I would've animated this, and maybe it wouldn't have looked as cool for the final fight, but the true climax of the finale was the Zuko and Azula agni kai anyway, so it hardly matters--I'm picturing him doing the rock-shield thing and going into a brief meditative state, where he finally achieves the enlightenment necessary to unlock the AS on his own, no rock of chiropracty necessary. And at this point, I'd give Ozai a Disney Death, since leaving him alive causes more problems than it solves and it's not necessary for Aang to kill him for him to die--they're fighting on a mountain ffs--but if you don't want to change that part then him figuring out energy bending as part of becoming a fully realized Avatar would at least feel more earned than the lionturtle just handing it to him. (And that could've been foreshadowed better by seeding the idea for it earlier in the season.)

After all of that, particularly if you up the emotions during the agni kai and have Zuko and Katara kiss there (or something less explicitly romantic but still tender, like a brief forehead touch), it'd feel pretty natural to have a just friends ending for Aang and Katara. Maybe a brief, slightly awkward but ultimately amiable conversation if Zuko and Katara had a ~thing at their final fight, and then the final shot of the series could be the gaang all together, maybe zutara holding hands or Katara resting her head on his shoulder or something, but since they already kissed there wouldn't feel like a need to end the whole show on romance, something which I've always felt missed the point of the series.

And then, y'know, after that, the world's your oyster! This is how I'd do it if I were trying to keep the bulk of the final season intact. Of course, breaking it all down to its component pieces and rebuilding from the ground up is also an option, but that'd probably be a longer post lol.

#zutara #atla #m.aiko salt #k.ataang salt #atla canon rewrite #hey albert kim if you're taking notes on how to do season 3 of the LA................#Anonymous #asked

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astradelphia · 4 months ago

Text

Some random observations about romance in astrology.

♍ Virgo Venus- Virgo have an eye for clean aesthetics. Think 'that girl'. Clean girl makeup. Minimalist dress. Can express love in practical ways eg did you eat today? Let me make something for you. Or going out of their way to help you. They may not even be aware that this is an act of love for them because they just do it instinctively. Virgo can be perfectionists too. They hold themselves to such high standards they might do the same to others. They might help you grow and evolve or they might be too critical- even if they see this as an act of love as they just want to help you be your best self and make the relationship its best- but could be nitpicky or fussy. Most likely to get the ick. If they meet someone who passes all their stages of overthinking they can be very devoted. There's a reason they match well with scorpio. Though more grounded and analytical then emotional this can be a good balance. Virgo represented by the maiden also can be misinterpreted. Being an earth sign I think they can be quite sensual once they've selected a partner. They might view sexuality as a basic need for wellbeing and want to embrace it on a regular basis. They can also be too bodily aware, technical or methodical. Maybe too in their heads and they need someone to bring them out of it. They want total loyalty and commitment. Some may not date unless for marriage - there's too much fine tuning to be done in their own lives to waste time on someone who isn't up to their standards of personal growth. However some Virgo may have a tendency to choose partners who need fixing. This isn't a healthy dynamic but appeals to the Virgo need to problem solve and improve things, an energy best applied elsewhere. They'd make good interior designers with their eye for aesthetics and organizational tendencies. Virgo also value taking care of health beauty and hygiene. Turn offs are the opposite of those or an untidy living environment. Acts of Service could be one of their languages. I think they could also be overthinkers so words of affirmation may be important to them too but they appreciate actions.

♎ Libra Venus - Libra is ruled by the planet Venus so this feels like a comfortable position to me. Libra's have a natural eye for beauty and love of aesthetics. They want to make the whole world beautiful. Don't mistake them as being shallow though, their definition of beauty can be broad and all the Libra's I know have a love of humanity in general. Being an air sign they're also intellectuals. You have to charm their mind to get to their hearts. Deep philosophical conversations, witty banter, discussing anything and everything, emotional intelligence, attracted to inquisitive minds. Libra's value harmony balance, cooperation and peace in all things and in relationships. They'd rather talk things out then fight it out. Might be good at compromising. Might also be very indecisive or fickle but once they truly set their minds on something that's it. They are naturally charming and flirtatious - sometimes they can flirt without meaning too or just for fun without any intention behind it. Some of them may love the idea of love but have commitment issues. Libra being a venusian sign makes them sensual creatures. Pleasure my senses vibes. Physical touch all over everywhere. Makes a good partner because they'll care just as much about your wants and needs as their own. They expect the same in return. A balanced Libra may rule with head and heart but being air signs I'm inclined to think they tend to rule with their heads a lot. Can be over thinkers. Analyzers. Might stare into your soul, scorpio gets the rep for this, but Libra love to understand people and make people feel understood. This can feel like psychoanalysis sometimes but it's out of love they really just want to know how people think maybe out of curiosity too. 'I relate' is their catchphrase.

Libra rules the lower back, hips and buttocks. May possess good qualities of these or may be attracted to them in others. Venus dimples are their characteristic.

They may intellectualize their feelings or yours. They may view emotional displays as more like a debate or discussion them emotional expression. They still mean well but this could be frustrating for some.

♏ Scorpio Venus - scorpio can get a bad reputation so going to focus less on bad stuff here. They are deep. They feel things deeply. Emotional. Very passionate, devoted and loyal. Scorpio is ruled by Pluto the planet of transformations. Being loved by a scorpio may make you transform. This can be intense and uncomfortable for some but can also be a good thing. They want to know you completely - heart, mind, body and soul. They want all your secrets and they'll keep them. They'll probably accept all the feelings you find negative in yourself. Accept your dark side. They may not be so quick to open up to you. This can feel unequal. Scorpio like a bit of mystery so don't dump everything on them in one go you can take some time too. But because they want it all but aren't willing to let you in so much it can feel frustrating. Don't rush a Scorpio though just create a safe space for them to be themselves with you and let them know that you really want to get to know them on the same level too but it's okay for them to take a bit of time. They might need time to build trust but once they're committed to you they could be the most loyal and devoted partner you've ever had. They want to merge energies. They want to make love to your soul. Everything has to mean something beyond a superficial level. Will stare into your soul. Can have an intense gaze. They like people to match or appreciate their depth and intensity but sometimes don't like being stared at even though they do it to others all the time?

Dark side of unevolved Scorpio is stalker behavior. Obsessive. Controlling. Manipulative. Possessive. Jealous. Suspicious. If they sense disloyalty whether it's there or not these traits can come out so be careful.

Could like dark aesthetics.

Jupiter aspecting Juno or Venus positively can indicate good partnership or marriage. In mythology Mars and Venus are lovers. Jupiter is the husband Juno the wife but Venus can also embody wife energy. For the same reason I think Jupiter and Moon aspects can also be an indicator as the Moon can embody feminine energy and wife energy.

8th house synastry - passion. Intensity. Transformation. Soul felt passion. Chemistry. Could be change eachother on a deep level. Pluto/Scorpio energy.

5th house synastry - Okay I love this placement! To me this seems like a best friend and a lover and you could play like kids together. Fun and joyful. It could be a fling, could be flirtatious energy or a crush that's hard to get over. Childlike spirit. Young at heart couple. Could bring out eachothers inner child and be very playful. Could also indicate wanting children together?

Aries Ascendant in composite - young at heart couple. Playful competition with eachother. Unstoppable team together. The couple that gyms or plays sports together. Activates their drive or spark. Really just like being around eachother. Could get competitive with eachother in a negative way if they forget they're on the same team.

Notes: this is just from my notes app so it's a rough thing I might improve this later and make it more pretty and aesthetic or add on to some of the observations.

Disclaimer - I am not a professional astrologer. Personally I take it all with a pinch of salt I don't think you can determine compatibility or everything about someone based on this especially not just on one placement. This is just for fun and can maybe give you some insights and clues about yourself or the other person :)

Hope you liked this post! Feel free to comment if you have other placements you'd like some notes on but please be patient as I'm not planning on posting super regularly right now.

#astrology observations #scorpio venus #libra venus #virgo venus #composite chart #synastry #5th house synastry #8th house synastry #astrology love

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sir-adamus · 7 months ago

Note

One thing I love about RWBY is how it manages to thread that needle of, "That's a person" & "They have a reason for being this fucked up" without forgetting or failing to convey, "Doesn't mean they aren't still being bastard!"

See Adam, Ironwood, Salem, Mercury, hell even Jac got some of that treatment, as much as his narrative role needed and more than someone like him would usually be given.

In that regard though, it does always leave me vexed and confounded that people act like the Brothers will be some big exception. As though their issue is just that they are a little confused and don't understand some things, but once its explained and or they go home, it'll all be chill.

Like, sorry but if the woman they tortured for potentially millions of years still gets the "She's still being a bastard" treatment I cannot envision why the Brothers genocide would avoid being framed or treated as such.

yeah it's kind of weird how people have a blindspot for the gods being petty, arrogant assholes in the backstory; like it's been a weirdly common trend to see people making posts claiming it's fine for the gods to be assholes because they're gods (and therefore shouldn't be held to any kind of moral standard whatsoever), or thinking that post-volume 9, now the goal of the show is RWBY reuniting the relics to summon the gods because "the world is united" and the gods will deal with Salem.

like, the terms of Salem's immortality are made very clear, and these jackasses aren't gonna rescind on their punishment of her (which i need to point out was immensely disproportionate even before the mass genocide. "you need to learn a lesson, so now you can't die until you do" is fucked up) just because everyone else is on the same side.

and on top of that, the gods returning only means hanging a Sword of Damocles over humanity's head, because if they don't stay united, then it's just gonna lead to another disproportionate tantrum and Remnant getting the full scorched earth treatment. not to mention the gods dealing with Salem would ultimately prove her right and be immensely unsatisfying narratively (it would literally be a deus ex machina)

RWBY borrows heavily from Final Fantasy and other JRPGs, and a major recurring element in those sorts of games is that defeating the present big bad in the narrative is never the end of the story, there's always a greater scope threat that's usually either your dad or god or both. coupled with how Light and Dark are heavily influenced by mythological gods and how those are often petty, short-sighted and abusive bastards who cause more problems than they solve, and we've recently been outright told that the Brothers have completely misunderstood what 'balance' is and how that's factored into their conflicts and decision making, and how that then filters down to their treatment of Salem, demanding she understand something they don't and expecting her to learn it through the punishment they inflicted on her only ended up causing more damage

Salem's defeat has to be factored into ending her curse, and the end of volume 9 makes heavy implication that it's RWBY, not the Brothers, who are going to achieve that. but even with Salem then out of the picture, the Brothers are still a threat, they still wiped out the population of an entire planet for childish reasons and routinely abandon their creations; someone else could go for the relics to try and summon them, so there's the potential damage they could do to Remnant again, and who knows what same horrors and punishments the Brothers are inflicting on the worlds they've gone on to make and abandon since?

#RWBY

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nebula-gray · 5 months ago

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battle network 5's microserver incident is so intriguing to me because like... on the surface, it's really silly. dr. regal's ultimate plan for a world of evil is to make every extremely pissed off, and it leads to some really funny dialogue.

and i've noticed that people have a hard time taking it seriously, which is fair because... look at it. it's not taking itself seriously. but if you stop and think about it, it's terrifying.

everyone is so caught up in their own emotions, society can no longer function. people want to destroy things, start fights with other people, stop working, and all around cause chaos. in a world where almost every problem is solved through netbattling, people are resorting to physical violence. imagine how quickly things would fall apart if everyone was like this, how soon people would die if no one could cooperate.

and the thing is, battle network couldn't possibly show the real consequences of a scenario like this. it would quickly become too dark for a game aimed at children, and wouldn't mesh with the tone of the series. i understand why they went the silly route, and i'm glad they did so.

unfortunately, i think it leads to people taking the plot and the villain less seriously. dr. regal is already hated by a lot of people, and i truly believe this is due to bad writing rather than a flaw in his own plan. like, if soulnet had worked and people were like this forever, it would be disastrous. way scarier than a typical take-over-the-world plot, because you're directly manipulating people's emotions to make them suffer. and the only reason lan and megaman can fight back is because they have literal plot armor. if not for that, there would be no fighting back, no fixing this. it's scarily effective, and it makes me sad that no one seems to give regal credit for this.

i just... i love battle network 5, and the microserver incident is so interesting to think about. i hope i can get people to look at it in a different light the next time they play.

#and if you are interested in seeing this taken seriously: read my fic #where light shines shadows fall on ao3 #advertising aside #i just hold a lot of passion for this scenario in my heart #megaman battle network #mmbn #rockman.exe

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anxious-witch · 7 months ago

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On Charles, Edwin and Crystal's relationship with violence and how it does(and doesn't) solve their peoblems, and the inherit privledge of considering non-violence can always be the answer.

Before I get to it, sorry I cannot for the life of me find the post that talked about DBDA's relationship to violence aka that it shows that there is always a better solution and how most of the problems are solved through other means. It is a really good post, so if anyone knows it, please send me the link so I can put it here.

Anyway. What I wanted to say is that while yes, I partially agree, I don't think that's quite correct. Or not always. The series definitely makes a point of saying that things should be solved by other means whenever possible, but I think we see 3 instances where that isn't true. The first meeting with The Night Nurse and Charles, Crystal meeting David in the woods, and in part, Charles getting Edwin out of Hell.

Before I get to breaking down how each one was necessary, I think what kind of bothers me is the reaction Edwin and Crystal have to Charles attacking the Night Nurse. Not so much the inital reaction because I understand that they both have trauma connected to violence, but them insisting his reaction was extreme slightly...irks me?

I understand it from Crystal-she had a lot on her plate in the past few weeks and she just got out of abusive rs. Not to mention, she doesn't know Charles and Edwin for that long. But Edwin? My god did I wanna shake him.

Like, don't get me wrong, I love Edwin to death and the fact that he is flawed is part of that but I wish it was acknowledged that his disregard for self defense and to be able to not only refuse violence, but in many cases when Charles steps in to protect him to not even move aside because he knows Charles is there for what it is-a privledge. The fact that he never had ti physically defend himself ever since he got out of Hell is a privledge because Charles does it. And to no small personal cost. I don't think Charles likes to be violent. He doesn't revel in it, and we actually see him break down several times over thinking he is a bad person because he uses violence to defend himself and his friends.

Does he sometimes use it impulsively? Yes, as seen in the episode with the Devlins'. And he pays dearly for hi error, being stuck in a loop that's directly related to his own trauma.

But in some situations, there was no other answer. The Night Nurse would have made him and Edwin relieve their trauma until they gave in. Crystal couldn't help and in that moment, neither could Niko. Charles' violence gave them more time, which gave Edwin and then Niko, more time to think of a peaceful solution. Of a bargain. But it would not have been possible without Charles kicking her off the cliff.

For the scene with David in the woods-yeah, sure he didn't solve the whole problem of David altogether, but he did A) male him fuck off for the forseeable future and B) helped Crystal feel safer due to the fact he defended her when she was powerless. With the violence, he gives her time to gain her powers back, to come and resolve it directly when she feels safe and confident enough to do so.

We see it once again when he goes to save Edwin in Hell. Yes, they get out of Hell by running, but when Charles initally suggests it, Edwin is terrified. "If I run it chases me," he says and he doesn't move. So what does Charles do? He throws a bomb at the Dollhead Spider. Which once again, gives them time to run and escape and perhaps more importantly makes Edwin feel safe.

Violence is considered bad for a reason. But I think who and why someone uses violence is very important. A bully throwing a hit for fun and a victim throwing one back to defend themselves aren't the same. They cannot be the same. And bullies, no matter the form they take, sometimes only understand violence.

I am not saying go ahead and kill someone for bullying you. But I am saying that sometimes, the teachers don't listen until you throw a punch back. Problems should always be tried to solved peacefully, but if you think every problem can be solved non-violently, I think you had the privledge to never have to do so.

Charles takes on the burden of being a protector, of using violence as means of protection and I really hope that's acknowledged at some point. Because while yes, Edwin obviously has his own talents, Charles does his job at a great personal cost. And sometimes, while violence cannot solve the root of the problem, it can give you more time and space to get to the root. And that's okay, as long as you don't lose sight of why are you using measures you are using.

#charles rowland #dead boy detectives #edwin payne #crystal palace #tw violence #rio's rambly analysis

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ahappydnp · 7 days ago

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I would love to hear dan's thoughts on "people talking To him to About him" with each other" where did he discuss that?

so he talks about it in BIG here (25:23)

"there was a point around 2011 where the relationship with my audience shifted from what felt like direct communication between me and individuals that just saw me as a comedy creator to communities of people who formed to talk about me when i wasn't there"

but also his whole reason for creating the customer service blog was that he wanted to control/be a mediator for everything being said about him (quote from a now deleted tumblr post)

"The thing is, Kristen Stewart and One Direction don’t use tumblr, so they have no idea what’s being said about them, but I do. And when it doesn’t hurt, at the very least it’s despairingly irritating seeing people publicly talk rubbish about me with no reasonable way to talk to them about it. Should I leave tumblr then? Stop checking my tag? No that would be silly. It would be much better to solve the problem.

And if you have an opinion or a criticism or a theory - before you go & post it to twitter/tumblr in caps lock and cause another dramallamageddon, ask me about it. I won’t bite. I will totally politely start a conversation with you until we understand each others thoughts.

Therefore I have decided to make: http://customerservicedepartment.tumblr.com/

From now on, if you genuinely have something to say, instead of causing an alpacalypse, you can talk to me about it. I will not shout, I will be calm and polite and like the civilised wizards we are, can talk about it. You may be totally wrong about something, you may be totally right and make me think something I hadn’t realised before, but either way we will keep this over there, and leave everywhere else to have fun.

I think this is a wonderful idea if it works, but that’s up to all of us. So I urge you. ALL of you that would ever identify as Danosaurs, if you have something to say about me, don’t be another drama llama, go to: customerservicedepartment.tumblr.com and talk to me about it."

#anon ask #the urge to go hug that unmedicated depressed hyper empathetic kid who had just had quite possibly the worst idea of all time #and also me for having to watch BIG for 30 seconds to find that clip #god he was trying so hard to keep the control and he really thought he could despite skyrocketing to fame #phan

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ouidamforeman · 2 years ago

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This may make me look like an idiot bc I can’t articulate myself BUT!!!!!!!! Big Queer Good Omens meta incoming

I want to talk about This Neil Gaiman ask for a minute because I figured out why I really like his blanket response to this “discourse” a lot but still somewhat disagree on the nuance, and why fandom attitudes about this bother me much much more than his open ended response like this one

Under a read more because im going to get Insane

First of all this is going to be riddled with my own viewpoints on queerness as a transmasculine nonbinary person who reads too much theory so if u disagree please be polite lol

So like. To begin with I really don’t think Neil is obligated to understand these nuances or even comment on them, let alone explain them to fans desperate for validation, so the fact that he’s been able to answer so eloquently is pretty impressive considering how vicious fandom is. But I want to specifically talk about what I think he means here and why that seems to bother fandom so much sometimes, and how fan interpretation of these ideas he presents can get Really weird and interesting imo.

In my view, Neil is answering this from a Doylist perspective, as in like. To the real life human audience, angels and demons are inherently queer because they don’t fit into traditional human definitions of genders and sexualities. This especially comes across in his insistence that Aziraphale and Crowley aren’t gay because they aren’t human men, but they ARE queer. This literally just looks to me like him saying “yeah so no angels and demons fit into these categories so they’re definitely queer from our perspective but I understand ‘gay’ as being two men and i don’t think that fits because it’s narrow” and while I disagree on some nuances here for reasons I’ll get into I think this makes total sense as an author describing how, from his perspective, an audience is intended to view these nonhuman characters.

However, I’m much more interested in a more Watsonian explanation of how A&C are queer, one that’s much more relativistic and honestly not something I expect Neil to go over every time he gets another ask about this???? My opinion has always been that A&C choosing human queer masculinity is significant and that it gives evidence to them being nonbinary, transmasc, gay, ace, aro, anything that people headcanon really. Because they are presenting themselves as queer in a HUMAN way in universe imo, which makes them queer not just by the standards of the audience but by the standards of other angels and demons in the story? I think that the fact that they were created as sexless and genderless and then CHOSE human gender presentations, whether nonbinary or not, that reflected themselves, and then them being in love with each other in a human way IS what makes them queer, not Just the idea that an angel without a gender or sexuality/romantic or other relationship orientation is inherently queer from the average human’s perspective. People who just want them to be Human Cis Gay Men are really missing this idea I think.

The thing is though. And I don’t think this is Neil’s problem to solve or whatever, nor does it mean “stop liking that angels and demons are genderless”. The thing that annoys the shit out of me. Is that fandom, even queer fandom, took Neil’s Doylist explanation of celestial beings’ gender status and just didn’t think any further about it. To this day people insist that A&C MUST be nonbinary forever just because they’re an angel and demon and were made that way. Like literally just inventing Fantasy Biological Essentialism again which is annoying as hell to me, another nonbinary person. Again, the fact that they were created without any sense of gender or biological sex and then chose any humanish gender for themselves at all whether nonbinary or not is what makes them queer in universe I feel. I think the “they’re an angel and demon so they’re inherently nonbinary and can’t be anything else” is shit tbh.

To reiterate, I think Neil is responding about this from a Doylist perspective aka “to the real life audience all angels and demons are queer because they don’t fit into human genders and sexualities” but I am focused much more on the Watsonian idea that A&C are queer in universe bc angels and demons can choose their gender presentations like humans can and everyone else hasn’t figured it out bc they haven’t been on earth to figure out what gender even is. I feel fandom gets weird about this because lots of people still see gender as something solely internal and inherent, when I genuinely don’t think that’s all it is. It’s internal feeling, external projection/behavior, and both of those as a reflection of social experience all at once. The feelings and internal sense of Knowing your gender or lack thereof is inherent to your self identity, but your gender is also informed by what you understand genders as, and what presentations you understand and have access to! Aziraphale and Crowley can be Human Genders because, because they’ve been on earth, they 1)know what gender is, 2)can see those feelings reflected in themselves, and 3)through that understanding choose how to present based on their feelings! They don’t just have to be genderless celestial beings in the sense angels are if they don’t feel like it anymore! They can be like “oh actually I’m a queer man” or “oh I’m nonbinary but in the way that I’m among humans and I’m not a man or woman.” I just feel like only considering them queer from a human or angel perspective but not both is sort of undermining the themes in the text against bioessentialism in favor of the instant validation of “oh they’re angels so they must be nonbinary.” Perhaps having any human gender presentation is queer to the average angel. Our internal feelings and sense of self knowledge as queer people is inherent. How we act on those things and assign meaning and labels to them can be anything! A&C can be anything they feel like! They don’t have to be the classic celestial beings above gender! I feel like they would love and have fallen into human gender customs just from so long on earth, and that doesn’t mean they can’t be nonbinary or agender. It means they, as a part of humanity, saw and understood human genders and realized what gender they were in relation, whatever you headcanon that to be. And that’s more queer than “god made them without sex and gender so I guess their species makes them inherently one thing”!!!!!!

#good omens #book omens #neil gaiman #good omens meta #go meta #queer #idk guys. Just really not liking the biological essentialist takes in queer fandom especially #why did u have to make up biological essentialism for fantasy creatures. please #I don’t blame Neil for this btw literally chill about him who cares #anyways lol

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