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swampgallows · 4 years ago

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my uncle works at blizzard and i know the end of shadowlands

here is my prediction, it’s sloppy as fuck but i wanna just draft my general idea before the shit actually comes out so i can be like “CALLED IT” if i’m right lol

okay so let’s talk DREADLORDS babey. they are not demons per se but a separate race of sentient beings called the nathrezim. apparently they were discovered by sargeras when he was traversing the cosmos. they were sitting around chilling with the old gods, which is how sargeras found out about the old gods and void lords in the first place. so the history of dreadlords and the old gods/void goes way back.

there are three things that dreadlords are very good at:

1. summoning chaotic shit 2. crafting chaotic shit 3. being chaotic neutral emissaries, mostly for the burning legion. mostly.

1. dreadlords are really powerful interdimensional beings from the twisting nether. however, with the afterlives: maldraxxus cinematic it possibly implies that both the denizens of the shadowlands and the nathrezim themselves have the power to move between life and death as well as laterally across realms like the elemental plane, twisting nether, etc.

2: the dreadlords have forged the sword apocalypse and are possibly the original smiths of the helm of domination and frostmourne. we know that these artifacts are not of azeroth. the nathrezim could have smithed both the helm and frostmourne with help from the jailor and his magic. side note is the WoW canon spelling his name Jailor or Jailer? ive seen both. guess it’s one of those imposter/impostor situations.

anyway, point number 3: we have witnessed dreadlords allying themselves with several different factions, including but not limited to the scourge (sub-faction of the legion), the burning legion, the light (lothraxion), and waaaay back when... the forsaken. by sprinkling themselves throughout the cosmos they can tip the scales on several fronts toward chaos/old gods/void (yes, even lothraxion, since the Light seems to have its own agenda per Xe’ra).

newer players may not know that sylvanas once had a dreadlord ally named Varimathras. one of his click-quotes he’d say “I’m always on the winning side.” he claimed to hold no more ties to the burning legion and that he also wanted to get revenge on arthas/the lich king, and since that was sylvanas’ ultimate goal, they teamed up. he used to chill right next to her in the royal quarter, until the battle for the undercity. this was a wotlk-era event not unlike the pre-bfa “war of thorns” that followed The Wrathgate. the horde, including thrall and varok saurfang, led horde troops into the undercity to oust the mutineers from the horde. the alliance was also present, with newly-returned king varian wrynn and lady jaina proudmoore also invading to take their revenge on putress and his loyalists.

but before all that, sylvanas could have possibly been clued in by varimathras about the jailor’s intentions all the way back in wrath. especially if she was looking for a way to defeat the “death god” lich king, varimathras would have been more than happy to tell her about death’s boss—the jailor—and the suffering arthas would undergo in the maw. (remember, shadowlands itself is not new lore. it has existed since the dawn of warcraft itself; whenever you die in game you are in the shadowlands. the spirit healers in the graveyards are in the shadowlands.)

again, this is just my speculation, but varimathras easily could have told sylvanas about the origins of the helm and frostmourne, the source of arthas/the lich king’s powers. varimathras/putress betray her (though even this has conflicts with new lore, e.g. Chronicle [my bane] saying that Sylvanas had planned the Wrathgate all along). battle for undercity happens, and varimathras is banished.

sylvanas maybe figures ‘dont worry imma bust that shit open when i go kill arthas’. maybe she even planned to hold dominion over the scourge and wear the helm herself, taking the place bolvar has currently. but the halls of reflection & ICC happen and... she doesnt get to kill arthas, her one reason for continuing her existence.

so we get Edge of Night, which potentially planted a lot of seeds (if blizz is that clever).

VALKYR possibly trick her (i have said this before), as they are agents of the scourge/the jailor, hopefully to get sylvanas on their side to incur more death and be a secondary wave of would-be scourge (since bolvar aint doin that job and he’s not dead so they cant really get to him BUT they can travel throughout the shadowlands). either that or maybe they were planning on her becoming the new lich king and when bolvar got the hat instead they got a lil pist about it.

sylvanas is foisted into the very non-consensual position of “choose death and suffer for eternity or come back to life and Lead Your People™”. there is some OLD ASS LORE that i cannot find and maybe it’s something i misread somewhere or whatever but i was always under the impression that the Light could not save the Scourge, so anyone turned Scourge could possibly end up in the Maw on principle of being inherently irredeemable (hence the name “Forsaken”, they cannot be saved by the Light). the lore might have changed or, like i said, i might have just picked this up from somewhere and it’s wrong entirely. but if that’s the case, more Scourge = more anima dumped into the Maw disposal, which strengthens the jailor. either that or breaking sylvanas’ spirit to redirect her vengeance on Capital D Death rather than arthas himself.

basically everything sylvanas does while “alive” in azeroth pales in comparison to the eternal suffering and torment that awaits her if she is to die. so she has literally nothing to lose and can only gain by at least keeping herself alive as long as possible, no matter what wild shit she gets up to, it cant be as bad as the maw.

ultimately i think sylvanas becomes the new jailor to satisfy both her loyalists/fans and those who want her to pay for her crimes, she is redeemed by technically stopping the maw expansion by taking over a la bolvar keeping the scourge dormant, all the symbolism of her destroying the helm of domination becomes all the more poetic and poignant along with her ‘this world is a prison and i will set us all free’ bullshit, avoids her potential fate in the maw as a prisoner by becoming the jailor itself (”better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”). PLUS then she gets placed in a limbo much like illidan fighting sargeras for potentially eternity by being dead-but-not-really as the jailor so blizzard can cameo to her or make merch of her all they want or bring her back as deus ex machina if they feel like it.

i had way more details about this shit when me n the best friends talkd about it a while back but it’s been seemingly an eternity since then but yeah the tldr

sylvanas becomes jailor (predictabo) because varimathras spilled the beans about the funny sword and hat his buddies made purely for the bants w the old gods/void (less predictabo).

boy are they gonna make that covid vaccine soon or what i need a fuckin job

#world of warcraft #shadowlands #metacraft #blathering #long post

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arcticdementor · 3 years ago

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A few days ago I typed into Google (with quotes around my question to require an exact match):

“Do whites have civil rights?”

To my surprise, Google asserted in response that nobody had ever asked that precise question before in the history of the internet.

Today, Google lists my blog post asking that question, but only after announcing:

It looks like these results are changing quickly

If this topic is new, it can sometimes take time for results to be added by reliable sources

In other words, Steve Sailer is not a reliable source, so hopefully somebody less deplorable will soon post this text string, but until then we’re stuck featuring Sailer’s impertinent question at the top of our results. But we at Google want you to know that we are not at all happy about it.

Or something like that.

…

This got me thinking about how the Supreme Court could play a role in saving the United States of America from breaking apart due to the surging tide of antiwhite racist hate emanating from many of its most powerful institutions.

Keep in mind that there is no way to divide the U.S. up geographically that will cure what ails us. Fortunately, we still have a fundamental Constitutional framework of “equal protection of the laws” that can be restored to turn the power of the state away from fomenting discrimination against whites and toward preventing it, just as it was used more than a half century ago against discrimination against blacks.

…

That’s true, but…here’s the thing: Technically, the Constitution hasn’t been abrogated in favor of the theories of Prof. Ibram X. Kendi. The Supreme Court can reinstate Constitutional principles such as equal protection whenever it chooses.

So, I am going to list a series of principles and actions that could help hold the country together peacefully. I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to engage in extended legal argumentation in support of them. You can hire lawyers to do that.

Many of these ideas are existing law, but have largely been forgotten. It is time for the Supreme Court to restate them in no uncertain terms.

And some of my proposals are not yet law but can be made so by judicial fiat.

The first principle must be that whites have civil rights. All antidiscrimination laws must protect whites as fully as nonwhites. The courts must articulate explicitly that whites are a protected class, same as any other race.

…

Rationalizations such as “We are not attacking white people per se, just whiteness” must be laughed out of court as feebleminded excuses for race-based hate. To use schools and workplaces to attack whiteness is to attack whites for their race, which is against the law.

All legal reasoning based on the assumption of a permanent, unassailable, invulnerable white ruling majority is obsolete and must be dropped.

The Supreme Court should announce that the era of it permitting violations of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause by tolerating discrimination against whites is coming to a close.

The Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision purportedly outlawed racial quotas, but legalized racial “goals” so long as they weren’t called “quotas.”

Importantly, Sandra Day O’Connor’s controlling decision in the 2003 Grutter case that temporarily legalized affirmative action came with a 25-year time limit.

Now 18 of those 25 years have gone by. The court should announce that racial preferences will, as scheduled, terminate in 2028, the 50th anniversary of Bakke.

Of course, by 2028 blacks will not be performing the same on average as whites. More blacks will be NFL cornerbacks and more whites will be hard-science Nobel laureates. The effects of 70,000 years of largely separate cultural and genetic evolution will not disappear soon. But 2028 will be the 60th year of explicit affirmative action in violation of the Constitution. Sixty years is enough. The country can’t survive 70,000 more years.

A good guide for the Supreme Court is to find ways to reject the edicts of Kendiism, such as that “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” But two wrongs don’t make a right.

The increasingly popular belief that whites alive today deserve to be punished for the sins of dead whites in centuries past must be denounced forthrightly as a violation of basic principles of the Constitution such as the ban on bills of attainder. Taxpayer-funded programs to demonize and demoralize innocent white children as vengeance for the sins of long-gone co-ethnics is not only unconstitutional but wicked.

Judges should enunciate that arguments over whether one is punching down (bad) or punching up (good) are irrelevant. Punching is against the law.

The mantra “Diversity is our strength,” as Dan Quayle claimed, is not part of the Constitution. Instead, it is an empirical assertion that must be subjected to strict scrutiny when it is offered as an excuse for racial discrimination.

Ours is a system of limited government. Equal protection of the laws refers to the operation of the laws, not to the outcomes of the cosmos. Equal protection does not mean that all are assured equal net worths.

#steve sailer #taki's mag

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kendrixtermina · 5 years ago

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Compare and Contrast: The ‘Rival’ Characters

In each house there’s like this one guy who doesn’t really get along with the House Leader

I swear this is the last rambly essay. Or... second to last.

Felix

Perhaps the most “typical” rival - The Blue Lions in general are designed around basic fantasy or anime archetypes with a twist here and there so its not too suprising that Felix starts off like a less chliched/ more reasonable variant of your basic anime rival.

He’s your basic ‘Arrogant Kung Fu Guy’, a loner, not very friendly, focussed on gaining strenght, used to be friends with the MC once, not a fan of “the power of friendship” but not immune to it either... though unlike most examples he’s not envious or obsessed with beating Dimitri nor actually particularly arrogant. When Leonie beats him with a trap in their support he’s like “Wow thanks, you made me aware of a potential weakness”

Like your classic anime rival he is the strongest of the Lions apart from Dimitri himself, but has a contrasting fighting style - Dimitri is big, tanky and has immense brute strenght, but is clumsy; Felix is lithe, agile and has a very skill-based fighting style. The second strongest deer or eagle would not be Lorenz and Ferdinand. It’s definitely Lysithea for the deer, and probably either Hubert or Petra for the eagles.

Also like your classic anime rival, he’s got a backstory that parallels the hero’s. He also lost a beloved relative in the tragedy of Duscur and also still feels a lot of attachment to people who are gone, but he deals with it very differently than Dimitri. Unlike most cases you can’t really say that one of them did ir ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ both have their dysfunctionalities resulting from the loss if anything Felix is more level-headed though his rejection of all attachment isn’t grounded in maturity either.

They managed to have the classic “ideals are BS, only strenght matters” line actually make sense in a non-voldemordy way for once if you consider the context where he grew up, he definitely has a point. Though he would protest the notion he actually has a moral code of his own (Dimitri clearly offends it - though mostly he’s really thrown of by/ doesn’t know what to make of the Dr. jekyll and Mr. hyde situation) he just wasn’t ever told that it “counts” as it’s not what passes for morals in Faerghus. He’s present and results oriented, rather than guiding principles or rules of thumb he likes to focus on wether it actually saves lifes. (”We’re protecting your subjects not your ego”)

Likewise it makes more sense for him to be the team contrarian when Dimitri actually does have no plan or regard for safety while he’s in Avenger Mode, but ultimately he very much wants Dimitri to succeed.

Another thing of note is that since Claude and Edelgard are revolutionaries, their rivals are the token traditionalists of their respective teams, whereas Dimitri is someone who wants to reinstate the order - He doesn’t like oppression any more than the others but he thinks the existing social institutions have their merit; As he sees it they’d work just fine if they were just carried out virtuously and as a service to the people, not selfishly abused. Hence his rival is one of the two more independent-minded Lions.

Lorenz

Of the three he’s probably the one who most dislikes their leader and who is most genuinely flawed at the start of the game.

With Ferdinand it’s not more than a passing first impression you quickly notice that while he may be naive about how he comes across he isn’t actually arrogant nor does he hate or have seditious intentions toward Edelgard, he’s actually a deeply good guy, a straightforward hero to contrast Edelgard as an anti-hero. He lived an easy live in a good environment which allowed him to develop his potential to the fullest whereas Edelgard was forced to resort to things she doesn’t like because of her harsh life and precarious situation. She just wants to live quietly in peace but had to to grand impactful actions because someone needs to fix the broken system and she happened to have power she never asked for, meanwhile Ferdinand really wants to be a politician and go down in history but is afraid that he’s not making enough of an impact. Felix is more complex, he truly IS mean and spiteful as a real character flaw (with Dedue and Dimitri he has arguably valid principle-based reason to dislike them; But with Sylvain and Ingrid he’s just being mean for meanness’ sake due to his own issues with attachment and says some genuinely awful things to them) but its the one sharp edge on an overall principled dude who actually does care for his comrades, Dimitri included, and he is not a bad person.

Lorenz meanwhile is certainly not what he seems either, he’s not just a superior twat and actually very dutiful, believes that the nobility should actually live up to their obligations and is sort of a cautious shrewd political mind, surely not half as naive as Ferdinand. At the same time he has real shortcomings, at the start of the game he’s somewhat immature and frivolous (very apparent in his pre-timeskip supports with Sylvain and Byleth), though his intentions are not per se impure (he really wants to marry and is actually picky and romantic), he just doesn’t get it in his head that those girls he’s hitting on find him annoying.

But eh, he was like 18 at the time. More damning is his callousness and lack of perspective. He doesn’t really look past his immediate surroundings and the self-interest of himself and his own, and at several times alledges that he wouldn’t have particularly minded if Claude wound up dead in a ditch. He doesn’t know him and genuinely doesn’t care about him, making cold, dissing comments all the time in early part 1.

Of course when you get more context and get further in both their support chain and the plotyou find that he actually has good reasons to distrust Claude, it’s not just snobbishness and prejudice he just really cares about the Alliance and doesn’t trust it to someone who just showed up out of nowhere under suspicious circumstances after the previous Duke had an ‘accident’ (which, ironically, was the work of Lorenz’ own father) - but that doesn’t change that he’s genuinely a little callous.

If you don’t spare Claude on the empire route Lorenz stands out as the only person who will diss him - everyone else, imperial leadership included, is either sad or gives him the worthy opponent treatment, even Hubert who’s not usually the sort to point out his enemies’ redeeming features. He will also diss him in the Kingdom route and express spite that he didn’t get to be Alliance leader.

Indeed while Ferdinand and Felix will wind up supporting Edelgard/ Dimitri if they’re not recruited, Lorenz always opposes Claude unless you’re on the GD route. Even some of the arrogance is real, see his A support with Byleth, he really thought that commoners were ultimately less consequential/influential even though, as he later admits, Byleth was right in front of him the whole time.

To some extent this might be due to his upbringing his father was very much a “Look out for Number one” sorta person who cares only for the wealth of his own territory the rest of the Alliance be damned. Compared to that starting point Lorenz is already a whole lot more considerate as he thinks that his father at least ought to consider the rest of the Alliance, and would certainly NOT stab a rival in the back or callously kill commoners as collateral damage, even at the start of the game.

I don’t wanna get too down on Lorenz tho, once you get to know him he’s adorable and sensitive (his caution comes from actually being somewhat afraid/anxious underneath) and as a friend he is very helpful generous and considerate. I love that support where he keeps offering Ignatz jobs, it’s probably his best moment. He got layers and ultimately ends up having a positive political legacy. And if you’re playing GD or CF he even gets more open-minded by the end.

He also makes for an excellent contrast to Claude - both are somewhat self-interested, opportunistic and distrustful, but Lorenz is cautious and conventional, whereas Claude is unconventional and a risk-taker. Ultimately what brings them together is appreciation for the other’s shrewdness and good intentions, they’re both natural politicians. They also both love poetry.

And Claude’s storyline is one of bringing different people together and convincing them to come to his side/ have them come around. He uses deception to accomplish it, yes, but ultimately he wants people to see his point - Even someone who is as different from him as Lorenz is. After all he wants to build a world where there’s a place for everyone. So when he finally wins over Lorenz halfway through part 2 it means a lot to him. Claude probably half doubts that it’s possible but he wants everyone to truly come around.

Whereas Edelgard would surely prefer convincing as well, but failing that she’d strongarm or eliminate someone like that. (Though it has to be said that she would do so because she cares deeply about the net result and one priviliged twat’s feelings, or even her own, are not more important that ending oppression asap IMHO Both have a point and both have their shortcomings.)

Another Detail is that while Ferdinand and Felix are each from the Second most Powerful house in their respective countries, the number two spot in the Alliance is probably held by the Gonerils; But the Alliance by nature is more flexible and there is more rising and falling in influence based on wealth merit and your ability to convince and rally the other nobles. Lorenz actually could take Claude’s job, and early on, actually wanted to, so he’s the closest to a real political rival - and Claude’s strenght is more in politics and planning than it is in punching so this is fitting.

The other two are more one-sided, as Dimitri flat out ignores any hostility coming from Felix and would really like to be friends again (also Felix wants Dimitri on the throne ‘cause he’s still vastly better than Chaos or Cornelia, he’d just like him to act reasonable and get his act together, and is ready to support him once he does) and Ferdinand, try as he might, is simply no match for Edelgard in any way as she is the single strongest individual among the younger characters, she’s evenly matched with Byleth in the Church Route reunion scene and ends up with the highest total stats out of all the playable characters.

Ferdinand

Though he’s introduced as always trying to one-up her, makes sure to tell you that he’s the one in charge when you first walk in (no doubt naively repeating something his father said), can end up being full-blown enemies with her in 3 out of 4 routes including the Church route, he doesn’t actually have any sort of personal beef with Edelgard and out of the three ‘rivals’ he probably has the least actual issues with/ dislike toward his respective house leader.

Even when they wind up as enemies he’s actually one of the characters who speaks of Edelgard in a respectful fashion after her death (in GD he mentions how she wanted the next ruler to be chosen based on merit and how she really believed it), and at one point offers Hubert to let the two of them flee right under the Church’s nose if you have them fight. (Especially notable since the Church route is probably the least sympathetic toward Edelgard)

He IS the one who gets the classic rival trait of being competitive, jealous and attention-seeking - I tend to hate these sorts of characters but that’s usually because they are petty, spiteful people who begrudge other’s happiness and are always putting others down so I expected to hate him but actually ended up loving him to no end because he isn’t like that at all. He’s deeply good and has a heart of pure gold. He never lashes out. If someone dislikes him, his reaction is usually to come up some grandiose elaborate gesture to prove his worth and make them like him (Mercedes, Bernie, Dorothea etc.)

Ferdinand was raised by an actual supervillain who clearly wanted to bring him up with an ellbow mentality but that clearly bounced off his inherent goodness like teflon. His sheltered luxurious upbringing might’ve left him a bit naive pre-timeskip in ways that make him come off a tad arrogant or annoying, but he doesn’t think he’s superior to anyone - indeed he works hard to be worthy of his inheritance and justify being in the position that he’s in. He’s somewhat aware that his father’s a crook but his response to that disillusionment is to become the real thing himself. He wants to actually be exceptional and live up to the hype. The old man surely told him that he’s got to make the princess his bitch with some thinly veiled euphemisms but he kinda didn’t catch the seditious treasonous parts of it.

He doesn’t hate Edelgard nor does he wanna doublecross her or put her down, rather, he figures that he’ll be a pretty poor Minister if he can’t hold his own against her he must have something of his own to offer and just generally strives to constantly improve himself. He also strongly believes in thinking for oneself (in that sense he’s kinda like Felix but its a more intellectual thing for him) - In the Church route that’s why he views it as his duty to oppose Edelgard even if it costs him alot. If he sticks with them instead, he eventually realizes that she and Hubert are actually all for independent thought and actually pretty open to his input once they come to trust him (which doesn’t really happen on the other routes). If recruited to the Kindom he’ll also not be afraid to criticise Dimitri. Can’t recall any scene where he criticises or defies Claude right of the bat but then again Claude doesn’t exactly go around saying what his objectives are.

He certainly sticks out among the eagles the way Felix does among the lions - not quite to the same extent cause he’s not that polished and inadvertedly annoys people a lot early on, but they’re all pragmatic, antisocial or both and also largely unconventional and quirky, whereas Ferdinand is very sociable, optimistic, has high ideals and traditional. He’s the one among the nobles who actually wants his father’s job, he’s also the one believer among the largely secular Adrestians, though he’s not exceptionally devout. Though he values collectedness, he’s an expressive romantic sop and very genuine in contrast to the more stoic and unsentimental Edelgard and Hubert (as well as Byleth if they’re on the team), i mean Dorothea’s also extroverted and friendly but she’s often wearing a mask and kinda jaded too. Caspar’s nice and honest but he basically lives to fight. Basically if the Crimson Flower cast were Section Nine, Ferdinand would be Togusa - and like the Major, Hubert and Edelgard actually appreciate him for that though this is not immediately obvious to him.

Ferdinand obviously matures some as the storyline continues but - consider that Lorenz basically gets schooled and Claude is 100% right, and Felix gets to get over himself and stop being so tsundere, he’s not all wrong but he’s not right either and in his Kingdom route endings usually winds up continuing his dad’s legacy after all, even winding up in one of those chivalric tales he used t hate in his paired endings with Dimitri. Lorenz’ position is understandable, Felix has a valid point and comes from a good place, but largely, they are wrong. Ferdinand does somewhat change what he thinks but it’s more of a hegelian synthesis. He’s a helpful ally who contributes a lot and Edelgard and Hubert kinda know this before he does because he was busy comparing himself to her. He’s not gonna beat Edelgard at Edelgard stuff but he has a lot to offer precisely because he’s Ferdinand, and because he’s different from them and actually helps them improve and refine their plans.

After all if you want to replace a flawed system you’ve got to understand why it persisted and your new system has to solve all the problems the old one solves and then some, if it is to last.

Unlike Felix Ferdinand’s very proud of his country, but this is in the context of the Eagles’ main storyline being to put right what their parents done fucked up (or, in the case of Dorothea and Petra, what created the sucky circumstances they lived in) whether they do it with Edelgards revolution or through reconciling their homeland with the church.

Of course Ferdinand isn’t blind to his homeland’s flaws and wants to fix it because he cares about it.

Leonie

Now onto the MC’s own designated rival.

She probably can be said to be have a shade of petty jealousy but since it’s centered around a shared mentor figure and largely harmless it comes off with a distinct annoying-younger-sister vibe more than a more serious rivalry. She never really gets overly upset that she can’t beat Byleth; She just kinda keeps trying undeterred; Might as well shoot for a high target.

Notably she is actually a remarkably chill person in her other supports and has a lot more characterization than just the jeralt thing, with her poor village background and frugal, pragmatic outlook being pretty interesting, she just doesn’t get along with Byleth, but since they’re the POV character and Leonie is kinda constantly aggro at them that works in her detriment. For all that I’m frequently praising how even the more gimmicky characters are seldom one-note I still think they could’ve eased up on the gimmicks now and again.

On the other hand, it shouldn’t be so strange that even Byleth can’t immediately get along with everyone xD

Much like most of Bernadetta’s supports start with her freaking out and running away, Byleth’s usually go like this: At C the various characters act largely how they act toward everyone else (the nice characters are nice, the blunt ones are blunt etc.), then at B they spill their life story and worries and Byleth is like “pat pat”, by the second half of part II the monastery dialogues also evidence some level of fondness and familiarity even with the students that aren’t in your house (which is important cause most of them are pretty sad and apologetic about having to fight Byleth later on)

But of course there’s exceptions here, you have cases like Felix and Edelgard who instantly like them because of obvious similarities, people who take distinctly longer to be won over such as Hubert and Dimitri but ultimately do click with them after a certain point, and then there’s cases like Claude and Dorothea who DO like Byleth but are still somewhat stumped by their somewhat unreadable demeanor, they’re used to dazzling ppl with their charm, not getting the expected reaction and hence their defense mechanisms are lowkey active, indignation for Dorothea and suspicion for Claude.

Leonie doesn’t fit either category she sorta tries to apologize for her latest outburst each time but then ends up going off again.

On the one hand the fact that she isn’t overawed isn’t always a negative thing, it’s like she’s part of the family, and particularly the human side of it.

After they merge with Sothis most the students are awed and excited about their new power/looks and comming divine revelation - some of the eagles are notably cooler on this as they’re not as religious, Bernie’s lowkey scared, Dorothea seems kinda worried about them/ that this will distance them from normal people, Edelgard is secretly heartbroken cause she takes it to mean that they’re destined to be enemies - they’re not the only ones tho Lysithea notably worries about side effects (she would), but then there’s Leonie who’s like “But it’s still you inside there, right? That’s what important.” Like... I think Byleth really needed to hear that.

Instead of “wow everyone mysteriously likes you, you must truly be blessed” she’s like “you accept ppl as they are just like your dad no wonder people like you. ”, she just looks at them with a different perspective.

I mean Cyril and Catherine get a bit jelly that they get so much of Rhea’s attention but then that’s tied up in their own adulation of Rhea and so ultimately the magical destiny thing.

Even the infamous B support evidences a somewhat different, less distanced dynamic - Anger is a natural stage of grief but she’s going off in Byleth’s face when they’re still half in schock, which is a not so great situation but also different from the usual dynamic where Byleth is the calm in-control leader person while their conversation partner spills their soul - they can’t be, because they’re involved. Jeralt’s death affects them both in different ways and that leads to a rather painful clash.

Contrast wise Leonie is maybe what Byleth might’ve been like if they had been born normally. She’s also kinda sassy has a pragmatic fighting style and comes from a common, nonfancy background where she had to work on her own survival by catching her own food. But she doesn’t have the magical destiny/ random religion ready to throw itself at her feet, as she often points out she doesn’t have a crest or money so she has to be shrewd to even get her hands on good equipment instead of having a mystical legendary artifact just falling into her lap.

One wonders if Byleth and Edelgard ever ended up hiding out in some odd place in order to escape from two lance wielding redheards looking to duel them XD

Outcomes

Though Ferdinand gets this dialogue where he wonders about what might’ve been and laments the “Adrestia-shaped hole in his heart” his endings are actually pretty similar regardless of what faction he ends up with. He almost always becomes a statesman or politician of some sort.

He didn’t rely on things just falling into his lap so when they stop doing that he still succeeds, besides with his optimistic go-getter attitude and determination, it’s not a surprise that he’d be fine no matter what happens. It’s a big shock to him when his land gets confiscated on non-empire routes but he always deals somehow and comes out on top through the trials and tribulations.

By contrast Felix gets tons of unique dialogue for each route (with the most, but not complete overlap between VW and SS) and his endings are vastly different depending on wether he sticks with Dimitri or not to the point that even paired endings with the same characters can be vastly different. Generally speaking if he sticks with Dimitri he suceeds his dad and becomes Dimitri’s Right Hand Man (or Left Hand Man depending on where Gilbert and Dedue end up) whereas on the other routes he becomes a wandering mercenary and kinda doesn’t seem as satisfied with the independence and strenght that he used to want so badly.

Only Bernie and Alois come significantly close to having such hugely divergent endings based on route (He becomes the leader of the Knights of Seiros - unless he turns against them then he just chills with his family. Bernie gets a lot more “confident” endings in CF, the one with Byleth is a 180 and the Hubert one is similar, also she’s out of her room a lot more and talks about traveling etc. and even there it’s not ALL endings nor quite as pervasive. )

As for Lorenz there’s three ways it can go. If not recruited he plays ball with the empire out of self-preservation and, its implied, to save his father who’s not worth half of him, and gets killed in the process should the empire lose.

If he’s on your team there’s 2 basic paths depending on whether you’re on one of the ‘revolutionary’ routes (VW and CF) or the ‘restore order’ ones (SS and AM) Either he initially follows to pursue his own interests but eventually comes around to Claude’s and/or Edelgard’s ways of thinking, or, you spare him, since he joined the empire ‘cause they looked to be winning he’ll have no qualms jning you when you appear to win, esp once you nap that pesky bridge through which the Imperial troops would’ve marched in, so he has more leeway to do what he actually wants to do, ie oppose the empire and go down in history like he always wanted. He doesn’t change as much but gets plenty of opportunity to show off his more gallant side and redeem himself for the initial turncoatery.

As far as Leonie’s endings go, it’s nice to know that there was someone to take over Jeralt’s mercenary troupe - Byleth probably always thought they would do it but now they’re off being King/Queen/Archbishop/ eating cake with Edelgard

So she needn’t have worried/ eventually was able to take on Jeralt’s legacy like she wanted precisely because she isn’t magic

Of course there’s also the outcome where she dies somewhat ironically either at Gronder (”Can’t back down because I know you I’m a proper mercenary”) or Myrrdin (particularly ironic since Jeralt didn’t trust Rhea one bit and Solon and Kronya did, not, in fact, report to Edelgard. She was ostensibly trying to get Jeralt on her side post Remire.), in either case to fulfill her dream and become like her mentor she’s pitted against that mentor’s own kid, no option where she can be truly true to her allegiance.... slightly less so in the empire route since she believes she has good cause for revenge here, und understandably so. Edelgard can’t exactly go around yelling “I mean to DOUBLECROSS you!” where the slitherers can hear so she did look guilty.

It is supposed that she died offscreen at Gronder in the church route. :( Better recruit her. And Alois, if you’re doing CF, so poor Byleth doesn’t have to hack through all their remaining quasi-relatives.

#fire emblem three houses #fire emblem: three houses #fe3h #ferdinand von aegir #lorenz hellman gloucester #felix hugo fraldarius #leonie pinelli

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flying-elliska · 5 years ago

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about that last Axel/Maxence interview, French culture, identities vs universalism, and Pride. Discourse, I guess.

my tl;dr is that even though bits of the interview sounded extremely Straight TM and might have annoyed me a lot more if it was anyone else but them (lol i am so whipped) I think overall their hearts are in the right place and i really wish the internet shouting factory was a better place to have a nuanced debate about this instead of just harassing them constantly about every little thing, which of course means they’re going to understandably shut themselves off, and miss some points they could have learned from. So this post isn’t really about the interview per se, it’s more about the experience of being in an international fandom for a French thing, and something i’ve been struggling to put into words since the beginning. Warning this might get a little conceptual, i’m kind of woolgathering here.

French culture is (to make a big problematic generalization) much more geared towards the universal than Americanized global culture. This def has some positive aspects (like higher levels of politicization, critical thinking, social solidarity/sense that society should be held together by more than business/capitalism). But it’s also one hell of an issue when it comes to articulating minority rights and the place of communities. It makes it impossible to have a conversation about racism, islamophobia without accusations of ‘fuelling communautarism” and wanting to sabotage the Republic and it’s constantly instrumentalized by the right in disgusting ways. It’s made it much more difficult to have laws to ensure the equal place of women in power ; made gender studies suspicious ; made the concept of Pride a lot more fraught. Another thing is that the language of identity/community is, in general, not a positive thing, and is associated with the specter of nationalism and war. So the whole thing of ‘being proud of your identity’ is a lot less of a thing in mainstream culture ; it exists in activist communities that are very influenced by global activism and the Internet. It’s not until I went to study in the Netherlands (which is in general much more ‘globalized’) in an international student environment, with gender studies and discovering tumblr on top of that, that I really understood how cool it could be to have a specific queer identity. It’s still jarring to me how much, fhowever, American politicians or public figures talk about their heritage, where they’re from, their specific identities. It’s like a lot more of a taboo in Europe. So in France, especially on the left, they will talk much more about general principles and values. It’s...a problem when what is ‘general’ is completely socially and politically constructed. It’s a real conceptual straightjacket at times. At the same time that it does give a lot more space for in-depth discussions that are about concrete measures and plans, it takes away some key perceptives for those measures coming to fruition in a way that respects everyone and doesn’t reproduce power dynamics. It’s endlessly frustrating.... I’m not sure there is any culture yet that has found a good way to deal with differences, though. It’s an enormous work in progress (or regression, sadly, in a lot of places nowadays.) And a lot of my French queer friends are uncomfortable with labels/the concept of identity. They feel like it’s tokenizing and putting them in boxes.

Coming back to Skam France and that interview for a moment. When Axel and Maxence talk about approaching their characters from the point of view of them being just human, I totally believe their hearts were in the right place. In the French mainstream there’s been way too many portrayals of queer characters othered in a bad way, shown as disgusting, unnatural, over the top, etc etc. Or they’re presented as token, sexless, second rate stories for brownie points. So, starting from a place of respect and care, I think this is what they wanted to sidestep. They’re for all we know, straight, so they worked from the place of “love is love”, their own experiences with love so they could make it raw and real, and the fact that these are universal experiences and I don’t think they could have done anything different. What they did feels very humanizing, normalizing, and good. It’s just, when it comes to those interviews, I don’t think they have much of a framework for identity/difference as a good thing.

I feel like this is something skam france struggles with in general (and most skams too, since they’re set in Europe mostly where this kind of thing is a pattern.) Might be part of the reason s4 had so many problems, because in the end they had this need to end up with ‘but it’s a thing we all go through and now we’re all friends and we need to talk and yay!!!” and a difficulty honoring the specificities of Imane’s identity. S3 is so good very probably because it had a gay headwriter, but I don’t know if the straight members of the team recognized the extent of this.

Part of me also...really feels the ideal behind what they said in that interview. That it’s really cool that Pride serves as this place for everyone to connect with a side of themselves that is more colorful and expressive, to let go of clichés about gender roles and love and etc. That the LGBTQ+ community does have a lot to teach the world at large and that therefore it’s amazing that straight people are there as well, that everyone should join really, connect with the parts of themselves that are maybe a little bit fluid, liberate themselves. I get wanting to be a part of that, and the idea that queer love can serve as a sort of refoundation of our conceptualization of love in general ? Amazing. Even for newcomers. I hate gatekeeping, in general. And at the same time I can understand why it rubs people the wrong way, what they said, that it’s important to recognize the specific history and pain, that it’s not (only) about love in general but about this specific kind of love that needs a moment to be visible, not erased, and that it’s important, who speaks and is given a voice. There has to be a place for constructive criticism. And I want queer history and culture to be recognized on its own merits, too, as something wonderful, not just to be dissolved in vague concepts of ‘love’. But it’s part of this much bigger and complicated conversation.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this lol. All in all, some of the things they said did make me cringe, and I wish they educated themselves maybe a tad more on certain things, but I love their enthusiasm and their devotion to their work. The cancel/pedestal dichotomy on the internet is exhausting. I think Skam is like...one of those signs that the conversation is becoming more interesting and more complex. I think it serves a very important perspective, rooted in empathy and the need for connection, even if it can be a bit blindsided by its own mission at times, a bit too swamped in ‘everyone just needs love’ to be as sharp as its subject deserves. And I feel reducing all this to a debate about how two actors are or are not problematic is incredibly unproductive. If it serves as a springboard for deeper conversation, good. If it’s a way to heckle and feel important on twitter it’s like...sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh nope. This reminded me of Lucas coming out to Arthur and Basile - in the end, the thing is, I prefer allies who are enthusiastic and outspoken and can reach people even if they’re clumsy, over people who just shut up and say nothing out of a fear of being ‘problematic’.

#skam france

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blackswaneuroparedux · 5 years ago

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Anonymous asked: What do you make of Prime Minister Theresa May as her rules slowly comes to an end with the election of a new PM, probably Boris Johnson. An improvement? Will he be the one to get the UK out of Europe?

I never rated Theresa May, she was an ambitious but risk averse careerist like most of the modern Conservative Party. When she finally achieved her life time’s ambition by becoming Prime Minister, she made a mess of it.

Many years ago Enoch Powell, the great Conservative politician who was treated pariah for being so prophetic, stated the fate of all who climb the greasy pole of politics. He said, “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.”

The same fate awaits Boris Johnson.

Is Johnson an improvement? He will be if compared to May who was as about as compelling as watching paint dry.

My main objection to him is character. he doesn’t have the character to be a good Prime Minister. Like Trump he is a charlatan who is entertaining but preening with man-child issues and narcissistic entitlement.

I don’t care about his messy personal life as he bonked women half his life while cheating on all his wives. Nor do I care for the scandal of his love children outside of marriage. You can argue that this shows his true character. Perhaps. But of course, it does show his personal morality but this doesn’t actually stop him being competent at his job. The trouble is that he has never been competent in his life.

By all counts, Johnson is clever but has always been quite lazy and a low attention span to follow through on tasks. When he was Foreign Secretary he never bothered to read his briefs or dive deep into the red boxes. He’s been fired as a journalist for lying - which is pretty hard to do considering many journalists bend the truth. To many he is an opportunistic charlatan but with the confident artifice of Eton and Oxford grooming.

But I think he might be the only one who could takes us out of the EU. Make no mistake, we do need to get out of the EU.

But on what terms? At what price?

I fear his hands are tied, just like May, by the structural challenges of leaving the EU without a deal. The Irish backstop is of course biggest spanner to a meaningful deal. The prospect of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Island is one everyone secretly dreads in terms of what it might mean to return to the dark days of sectarian Protestant-Catholic violence. Ask any seasoned military veteran of the 70s and 80s and they will tell you Northern Ireland was their worst mission or posting than any they ever did. Even today the memories are bitter ones for British soldiers.

How the Irish border question gets resolved in the face of EU insistence of no more negotiations and compromises is a severe headache once the politicians stop their posturing.

Of bigger concern is President Trump.

It may come as news to some Americans but Trump is wildly viewed as unpopular by many in Britain, regardless of political loyalties. Both left and right see his dissing of the UK and interfering in British politics as gross and uncouth.

No one trusts anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth because he is a proven serial liar. When he talks of of trade deals with the post-Brexit UK, we all know he will never seek an equitable deal but one that is about ‘America first’ and screwing us over.

In this regard I do think the encroachment of American big pharma into British health system as well as the relaxing of food quality standards (like chlorinated chicken) is setting off alarm bells because they think Johnson will be will cave and be an obedient poodle.

Johnson’s supine role in not backing the current UK ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, is a case in point. It doesn’t look good if you are seen to being dictated to by a foreign leader if you don’t back your own foreign ministry. Nor will the British people ever forgive him if Johnson acquiesces as if he was running the 51st state for the USA. It would be simply unacceptable because we are a proud nation with a proud history.

Surprisingly, I’m not blaming Trump because his ‘America First’ beliefs. I think that is fine for the US as that’s his job to look out for his nation first. But conversely it’s bad for us. Trump as it’s now clear only thinks of deals in zero sum terms - there is only one winner so there has to be a loser. That’s his mind set. Again, I’m not holding that against Trump because he is being true to his nature.

America First is fine as far as it goes for American interests but for us we won’t get a fair deal because as a nation just breaking away from the EU umbrella we will not have any cover nor any leverage to punch back.

A pro-Brexit friend who actually worked under a minister told me that perhaps we should stay in the EU until Trump is replaced and then cut a deal. Firstly, I think he’s dreaming as no one can predict what the outcome of 2020 will be in the US. Secondly, who is to say whoever replaces Trump might be any easier to negotiate with? Thirdly, if the longer we delay leaving the more people will get used to us staying in and then it really will be harder to leave.

The big lie is that everything will be smelling daisies the day after we leave the EU with no deal. That’s BS. I know many corporate finance firms already making contingency plans to move to Ireland. Even Jacob Rees-Mogg, the arch Brexiteer, has set up his capital finance holdings firm in Dublin. Everyone I know with any capital or wealth already have insulated themselves as best as they legally can.

At the same time, these very people are salivating at the prospect of making the UK a place where easy money and capital can come and go with little oversight or regulation. Most of these things I agree with in principle. I think the City of London would continue to remain an attractive place to do business despite being outside the EU.

However I sometimes think the City of London has got its head up its own arse and thinks more about quick short term gains and little about the long term impact of its actions. The rot is deep in our country with the continued decline of investment in manufacturing in the country and greater wealth and education gaps between people. McJobs and the gig economy are not going to restore Britian’s greatness only hasten its decline.

Of course small British businesses will be hurt in the short and medium term by a no deal Brexit but don’t forget this is what they voted for. It will be painful. But some might well think it will be a worthy sacrifice to lose jobs and business in order to rebuild properly for the long term free of Brussels and bureaucrats. But that price won’t be paid by capital holding classes.

A very wealthy high flyer working in City of London put it to me over dinner not so long ago that people think that politics is about left vs right but actually it’s about those who have wealth and those who don’t.

The trick is to vent the flames of public passions towards abstract straw men like ‘freedom’ or ‘sovereignty’ or in the US it would take the form of ‘guns’ or ‘abortion’.

People on BOTH sides of an issue expend volatile passion that they each entrench their (legitimate) grievances so deep into permanent persecution complexes. It’s further ossified by the relentless and constant echo chamber they each inhabit to reinforce their own entrenched beliefs and prejudices. So much so they forget about where the real obscene truth lies.

That this has always been a Darwinian world and there will always be winners and losers in life - there will always the rulers (oligarchies) and the ruled, the haves and the have-nots, and the rich and the poor. It’s a very cynical take on human nature and our society.

As much as I wanted to disagree with him, deep down I felt there was more than a tinge of truth to his words. It’s true. The corporate world is not personal nor is it political per se. It’s just about the making money for shareholders and to accumulate capital for the sake of it. It wields power to insulate itself from scrutiny and to have the freedom to do as it pleases. It appeals to people’s base motives at their purest - individual self-preservation. At some stage it’s going to clash with the principles and the institutions of democracy and questions of what takes precedence becomes acute. But that debate is for another day.

I still like to think we live in a world where ideas matter regardless how bare you strip life down to the bones.

In the case of Brexit, to me the sovereignty of Parliament serving at the pleasure of the Queen is paramount. It’s ruling one’s nation from first principles. If it’s your nation then you should have sovereign control over all decisions being made for its citizens. Moreover those making the decisions should be open to public scrutiny and be accountable. The nation state (under a constitutional monarchy in the case of Britain) is only accountable to its subjects and not to outsiders. All fine in theory except it’s an issue when these very elites charged with ruling over the masses have deep structural rot in them and they are just floating to get by like dead wood. Renewal and regeneration looks like a pipe dream.

I love Europe and I consider myself a proud European but I find it unacceptable to be partly ruled from a foreign capital whether it’s Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Moscow or Washington DC.

The hubris of a Franco-German led Europe is real. The EU began on a worthy premise that both France and Germany never go to war again. But it has mutated into some confederated nightmare today. The folly of its confederate policies are apparent and it will only worsen.

I doubt Boris Johnson has the political gravitas - even if he has the low cunning or the wit - to out fox other European leaders and their mad integration policies. They know him too well since he was for years a lazy and incompetent correspondent in Brussels.

It may well be Johnson is the ‘useful idiot’ Britain needs to take us out of the EU but Britain will need another leader with integrity, character and conviction to lead us to build proper alliances and repair relations with other Europeans to collectively face threats to our shared identities and nationhood.

The trouble is I don’t see that person in the current Conservative Party. But don’t take my word on this please, I have a natural allergic reaction to all politicians of all stripes.

I don’t know how things will turn out but i am beginning to be concerned that whatever path we take is going to be fraught with danger - greater incendiary issues down the road will come back to bite us up the arse.

Thanks for your question

#question #theresa may #enoch powell #boris johnson #british politics

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scurvgirl · 5 years ago

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1-10 for Kass, 40-50 for Haruk!

Alright alright!

Kass

1. What is your character’s biggest fear?

I’ll give you her two biggest; (1) not being able to protect Ash and (2) losing herself, either because of the Qun or because of Qal.

2. What is your character’s favorite memory?

Kinda AU dependent, but I will do this for the modern AU’s where she’s left the Qun. When she was a teenager, probably around 14, she sneaked out of the dorms all the Tamasrans in training slept with some of friends. Someone had ordered in some “Contraband” cookies and they chowed down on them. She laughed and had a good time and they were all sorely reprimanded for that the next day. But it was worth it.

3. What is your character’s least favorite memory?

Slightly AU dependent since Qal could either be a one time encounter and be the worst memory or become her husband after running from the Qun with her. For continuity’s sake, I am going with the aforementioned AU state. Her worst memory would be the first time she saw what the Qun does to a Saarebas. She remembers shrinking in horror at seeing their lips sewed shut and mask affixed to their face. She remembers thinking how horrible it is and how she wished she could help, fix it. fix them.

4. Does anyone have a crush on your character? Is your character aware of this?

Hmm. In AU’s where she owns the bookshop, there is a cafe owner who is sweet on her. The cafe is located adjacent to the bookshop so they see each other a good bit. He gives her free coffee and has a kid of his own, so he gets the single parent thing. Kass is not aware of this and doesn’t want to be. When she meets him, she’s still reeling from Qal. He knows this and is respectful of it.

5. Describe your character’s dream date.

My initial inclination is to say something to do with a gondola. She has seen them in magazines and shows and thinks they are SUPREMELY romantic and wonderful. She’d love to just lay in the gondola at night, sipping wine and watching the stars.

6. What is your character’s sexual orientation?

Pansexual! Kass...really doesn’t care about gender when it comes to attraction. It’s the quality of the person that matters.

7. How does your character feel about their name?

Kass loves her name. She chose it specifically because she loves it. She loves that it can be long and elegant, Kassaran, or it can be shorter and sweet. She likes that it feels strong, but also friendly. It feels her, much more than Tamasran ever did.

8. Does your character hate anyone? Why?

She hates Qal. She hates that he took so much from her and that he hurt her and Ash the way he did. She hates most landlords on principle because charging someone for necessary living quarters feels very evil to her. She hates whoever hurt Mel in the past, she will FIGHT them.

9. How does your character feel about religion?

Religion is fine as long as it isn’t used to subjugate or suppress or control people. She doesn’t have a very high opinion of organized religion, but she enjoys a certain level of individual spirituality. However, she likes that religion can be a safe haven for some people, a comfort. She just doesn’t like it when people try to insist that everyone else take comfort in it and then attach rules to it by saying you have to be a certain way. If it’s not about love and acceptance and support, then it’s not about anything good.

10. Would your character ever kill someone?

In AU’s where she is NOT a warrior - hmm. It would take A LOT, but she would if pressed. It would mess her up a good bit because it really goes against her nature, but she would. Especially if said person to be killed was actively threatening the life of someone she loved.She would pull the trigger. She would feel bad about taking a life, but she wouldn’t regret saving the person she loved.

Haruk, my waterbender boi

40. What would be your character’s favorite school subject?

Foreign language or history! He enjoys learning about other cultures and the past.

41. Would your character want to have any children?

SO MANY CHILDREN. He likes to joke that he’’s gonna have 10 kids one day. Realistically, probably 5 or 6. He loves kids and wants a big family to enjoy the world with.

42. What would be your character’s dream career?

In canon, a renowned world trader. In modern AU’s, probably either a pilot or really anything where he’s paid to travel the world.

43. What is your character insecure about?

Haruk never feels like he fits in anywhere. As such, he worries if people really want him around because he knows he isn’t exactly normal. He grew up pretty isolated on the ship, and while he had friends all around the world, he didn’t see them consistently and they didn’t always stay friends. He also didn’t fit in with his family in the South Pole and he DEFINITELY didn’t fit in at the North Pole. He often feels like he has to overcompensate with being nice so people will be okay with having him around.

44. What is your character proud of?

He basically invented one-legged waterbending, at least, for him. That’s pretty cool. He is also proud of his hair.

45. What would your character change about themselves?

Physically, nothing! He likes his bod (which he should, it’s a good bod). He wishes he was tougher emotionally? He’s not fragile, per se, but he does feel a lot and it would be easier if he wasn’t so effected by things.

46. Would you want to trade places with your character?

No. I’d like to be a waterbender...but that’s about it.

47. What fandoms would your character be in?

She-Ra, How to Train Your Dragon, any and all medical dramas, the Bachelor/Bachelorette, Queer Eye, I feel like he’d like Stranger Things but idk because I’ve never watched it, Overwatch, Pokemon, Harry Potter.

48. How would your character type?

Like...on a keyboard? ...Normally?

49. How does your character stand politically?

The Firelord is a real dickhead isn’t he.

Overall stance is that the government should ideally be an institution that benefits the lives of its citizens by ensuring human rights. He wants people to feel safe and able to buy the goods he trades.

50. What is your favorite thing about your character?

I love how compassionate he is and how he can see good in almost anyone (except for like, the Firelord and his lackeys, those people are assholes). He is just such a sweet, good guy who wants the best for people and wants to help bring the best for people. Almost everyone has good in them, and that good deserves compassion and kindness, which he is happy to provide.

My somft boi

Thank you for the ask!

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mythlived · 5 years ago

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Odd numbers for Nikita!

❛ You gotta dig a little deeper !

Might be worth checking the tags on this one before reading through, just in case ! Most of them are pretty harmless, but better safe than sorry.

1. What does their bedroom look like ?

Nikita, despite being the only of his team that doesn’t have to share a room with anyone else, has the room with the least personality. In fact, it doesn’t have much of anything in it aside from the bare essentials. He has an alarm clock, a few sets of season-appropriate bedding ( his favorite set is the flannel that Marley made him get the winter that SCAR’s heat went out solely because it’s as warm as it is ), a dresser, a mirror, and exactly one plant—a cactus that he almost let die twice before Marley finally taught him to take care of it and some other kinds of plants; it’s been with him for a long time. And aside from the basic necessities like toiletries and what not, that’s it. His walls are bare, he doesn’t have any pictures, nothing. He’s trying to make it very clear that he doesn’t plan to stay with SCAR after the mission to bring down Arsenal is all said and done, even if his team doesn’t know that. The only exception to his “Nothing Sentimental” rule is the single bookshelf that he uses half of the allotted space for books and half for gifts he gets from his team.

Fun Fact: Nikita is the only one on his team that doesn’t have to share a room for three reasons. One is that he’s a team leader, the second is his claustrophobia. The dorms that SCAR requires they stay in aren’t small, per se. They have private bathrooms, washing and drying units, and small kitchenettes. But they’re essentially studios, so between the lack of windows in the SCAR dormitories and the generally cramped space when two or more people are living in the same one, it pushes the line a little bit since he’s already a particularly simple person when it comes to decor and belongings and having someone else’s cluttering up the space pushes him to just this side of uncomfortable. The third, and most important, is his ability. Nikita has a tendency to lose control of it while he’s sleeping. He’s woken himself up time and time again by accidentally hitting every nerve ending in his body because of a particularly vivid nightmare. It’s mostly because of that last one that he requested to be kept separate from his teammates when SCAR gave him the opportunity to pick them.

3. Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do ? How often ?

Nikita exercises religiously. On-mission he does what he can. For example, while gathering info on Rhys and Rasmus, he does things that won’t draw any attention to him, like running early in the morning and in the evenings when it’s cooler, push-ups, sit ups, etc. simpler things. Off-mission, he does a lot of sparring with his team. Typically, when off-mission his day consists of training sessions, sometimes with the whole team, but most often individual one-on-one sessions so he can cater to what each teammate needs to focus more time on or sparring sessions with the other team leaders ( there are two ! ) within SCAR. However, he does do days off, too. Even when not sparring, his team has set training schedules that Nikita has made for each of them that they adhere to, but he also strictly enforces rest days so his team doesn’t get overworked physically or mentally ( though he has more control of the former than he does the latter, but he does what he can ). His own exercise schedule outside of sparring when off-mission consists largely of weight training since he does a fair bit of cardio while on-mission.

5. Cleanliness habits ( personal, workspace, etc. )

Nikita is… sparse in all that he does. So while he’s doing something like cooking or knitting, he may have a messy little corner that he’s using, but as soon as he’s done, everything is put back in its proper place and left there until he needs it again. He doesn’t shuffle things from one place to another unnecessarily and he has a very specific shelf in his living space for things that he gets from the team ( Marley and Roka are particularly consistent gift-givers ) and even half of that is used for books, which he also doesn’t leave laying around, even when he’s in the process of reading one. He puts it right back on the shelf where he got it when he’s finished with it. This partially comes from not wanting anyone outside of his team that comes into his living space to get that little bit of insight into who he is outside of his professional persona. The less they know about him, he figures, the better. But, this translates into everything that he does. He’s like this with his desk, his kitchen, his laundry, his bathroom, his bedside table, his storage, everything. Anywhere he goes, he has the same habits, everything is neat, in its proper spot, and not being shuffled from one place to another.

7. Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time

Nikita doesn’t like wasting time, at all. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to actually get him to waste time. However, Nikita is also one of those people that very rarely finds himself thinking something is a waste of time in the first place. Participating in the team’s shenanigans ? Movies nights with the team ? He’s learning about the team and about ever-evolving popular culture. Relaxing ? Physical and mental health are important to success both in and out of the workplace. Reading ? Popular culture, cultural differences, history, etc. he’s learning, which means it isn’t a waste of time. Honestly, you name it and he probably has a reason it isn’t a waste of time, especially if it’s something his teammates enjoy doing or something that he’s taken a liking to.

9. Makeup ?

Nikita doesn’t wear makeup on a regular basis, but he’ll wear it if a mission calls for it. He’s not overly fond of it, but he doesn’t have any kind of aversion to it—physical or otherwise—either. But he doesn’t have any knowledge about it aside from what he’s learned via his teammates, which turns out, is not a lot. Rila and Roka are the two most knowledgeable about it.

11. Intellectual pursuits ?

Nikita is particularly fond of intellectual pursuits because they keep him busy. He likes to have something he works on learning thoroughly while off-mission. Sometimes those intellectual pursuits are languages and sometimes they’re history from various places, math, coding, or anything else that piques his interest. Usually, it’s something that he can learn from his teammates and in the beginning it was always something he could learn from them. He used that as a way to learn more about them and how people interacted in an environment that didn’t require him to be hostile toward the individuals and groups around him.

13. Sexual Orientation ? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general ?

Nikita is bisexual and demiromantic. His thoughts on sexual orientation in general aren’t super in-depth. He doesn’t care how other people live their lives as long as they aren’t hurting he or his team and that’s not something that could hurt anyone on principle. So he doesn’t care about anyone else’s orientations unless it directly effects him and, most often, it doesn’t. Plus, he figures that hating or spewing vitriol at someone for who they love is a cheap shot and makes you a shitty person—and that’s coming from him. However, he did witness Marley’s struggle with her romantic and sexual orientations and how she was reconciling that with her faith. Helping her through it had been just about beyond him, because it was very early on in their partnership ( and very early on as far as his separation from Arsenal goes, as well ) so he was at a loss on both her religion and any personal experience with romantic and sexual orientation. Luckily, it had been enough for him to sit and listen and peruse multiple pages from Google to help her along as best he could and that’s how he came to the conclusion that he did.

15. Biggest and smallest short term goal ?

His smallest short term goal goes back to his intellectual pursuits. Right now he’s trying to learn Spanish from Luca, even though it’s currently on-hold since they’re all on-mission. His biggest short term goal is to finish the current mission ( whether that means Rasmus ends up dead or Pyrrha prevails, one or the other, he doesn’t care ) and get on with the whole down-with-Arsenal shtick that SCAR has going. This, of course, leads into his long term goals, but that’s another post.

17. Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress

Nikita’s actually really picky about his clothing, but more the material than the style. He doesn’t like materials that are even slightly itchy, too hot, or rough. He’s particular about it because sometimes his ability makes his nerves jump when he wears something uncomfortable. It’s a lot of casual clothing, like t-shirts, jeans, nice jackets, etc. When off-mission, it’s a lot of active-wear since he spends about seventy percent of his day exercising and just can’t be bothered to change until he showers. Otherwise its lounge wear because he can. He literally goes to meetings with the other team leaders and higher-ups in his pajamas sometimes, his etiquette is atrocious. But he produces results—good ones—so they don’t say much about it. As far as rituals surrounding dress go, he doesn’t have any conscious rituals surrounding it, but he has found that he has the overwhelming habit of putting his left sock on before his right one and now that he’s aware of it he’s paranoid that if he stops doing that it’ll be bad luck or something like that. This thought is courtesy of Iris, who actually noticed the habit first after their sparring sessions.

19. What do they think about before falling asleep at night ?

Nikita does his level best not to think a single thing while he’s trying to fall asleep, but fails miserably every time unless he’s completely exhausted. This often leads to a fairly wide variety of things he thinks before he falls asleep. Sometimes he’ll recite language vocabulary in his head if he’s having a particularly bad day and doesn’t trust letting his thoughts wander. Other times he’ll think through what he can do for his teammates to make their training schedules better for each of them to avoid unnecessary fatigue or adverse physical reactions ( like how to keep Iris from overworking himself or what’s best to do for Rila’s asthma ! ) while they work to keep themselves fit physically and mentally. On especially rare nights when he’s feeling relaxed and, for the most part, fine, he lets his thoughts wander a little more. It’s nights like these where he ponders where he’s at now, emotionally, socially, mentally, even physically. However, if they start to wander in a direction he doesn’t like, such as where he’s been in his life before, he traps them back into those routine thought processes, whether they be vocabulary, training itineraries, mission prep, or even just going through recipes he’s memorized.

21. Turn-ons ? Turn-offs ?

Nikita’s general turn-ons and turn-offs that more or less decide if he likes someone are pretty typical. If he’s comfortable around them or they don’t care to put up with his incredible awkwardness at first and they just don’t give off a bad vibe, they’re essentially okay in his book, whoever they may be.

As far as physical turn-ons and turn-offs go, Nikita’s scarcely had the time or the trust in someone to actually figure those things out. He knows that he doesn’t like anything that causes unnecessary pain, because that’s liable to set off his ability with the already overwhelming emotion that typically comes with being at all physical with someone. Nikita’s had one night stands, but they’ve hardly ever been anything more than something he’s essentially forgotten afterward, whether it be mission-related ( this is not a topic easily broached with Nikita, because SCAR has made some pretty shady decisions on this that have affected one of his teammates ) or otherwise.

Overall, Nikita doesn’t really know specifics of physical turn-ons and turn-offs because most often he’s had other things to worry about in place of figuring those things out.

23. How organized are they ? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life ?

As mentioned earlier, Nikita’s very particular about how everything is organized and kept, at least in his own personal space. Which means he’s very good at keeping things organized, regardless of what it is. As far as how it translates into his everyday life, it’s in small gestures like putting the salt or pepper back where it goes in a restaurant, exactly as it was found or moving a package of pens back to its proper spot in a department store. Those little things are subconscious tics that some of his teammates find enduring, partially because he actually gets mildly irritated over it when people don’t put things back in department stores, despite him never having worked retail. He does not, however, get mildly irritated if the salt or pepper in a restaurant somehow doesn’t end up back where it’s supposed to go. And it isn’t just those things, but those are two pretty common examples. It also manifests when they find themselves having to stay in hotel rooms rather than safe houses, in loaned vehicles, etc. because out of the entire eight person team, Nikita and Luca are apparently the only two that can actually keep up with the proper documentation for both of those things and when Luca is stretched thin trying to keep up with the literal children on the team ( Iris, Marley, Kári, and Rila ), Nikita’s the last line of defense for receipts, room cards, cash, keys, and other things of that nature. He hasn’t failed them yet.

25. How do they see themselves 5 years from today ?

If all goes well, Nikita sees himself not having to worry about Arsenal or SCAR, because as indebted as he feels to the latter organization, his skepticism about what they’re doing is second to no other. Maybe it’s because of the way he grew up or the way they approached his “reintegration into society” ( as if he doesn’t work for yet another secret organization ), but he doesn’t trust them any farther than he can throw them. His team he trusts, but they were all hand-picked and are people he spends enough time with to know they’re trustworthy. ( Even if he thinks Luca is plotting the whole team’s demise, that’s separate from SCAR, his own coup d’état. ) But ultimately he’d like to branch out away from SCAR, even if he knows that fitting into any other little niche in the world is going to be overwhelmingly difficult. Now, whether that happens in five years or not is the big question.

27. What is their biggest regret ?

Nikita will, for all intents and purposes, always state that he doesn’t regret anything because regret is a useless emotion. This, however, is not entirely the case. The one thing that Nikita regrets and regrets more each day that he thinks about it is never having gotten to know his little sister and little brother and never planning to. That he has to keep up with them in other ways, just to make sure that his parents really are raising them well and not treating them harshly or forcing them into something they don’t want, puts Nikita the closest he’s ever been to heartbreak since his parents essentially sold him to Arsenal. But if they’re happy and as far away from his world as they can possibly get, then he’s fine. He can handle the regret and the heartache that comes with that, as long as they’re healthy and not in danger. And because of that latter part, he’s very discrete about his siblings and his own minor involvement in their lives. His team doesn’t know and he’d be hard pressed to actually mention them to anyone unless it was absolutely necessary.

29. Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster ( eg. The house is on fire ! What do they do ? )

Nikita hopes to literally all that is holy that SCAR never ends up on fire, because he doesn’t trust the entire building and the surrounding area not to explode if it does. Not that he’d tell anyone, but the thought of it actually causes a fair bit of foreboding within him. But his actual reaction to something like that would be far more understated than that. He’d probably panic the least out of everyone he knows at SCAR, whether it be his team or the other two. While he’d be fairly disappointed over the fact that he’s lost all the gifts his team has gotten him, his books, and bedding, he’d just be glad no one is dead. He’s come to expect the worst out of things like that, which is a leftover reaction from his time at Arsenal, when extrapersonal and intrapersonal disasters were never accidents, no matter how much it was drilled into their heads that they were. But ultimately, in comparison to the rest of his team at least, Nikita’s reaction would be very mild. He’d be inconvenienced, but that’s about the extent of it.

31. Most prized possession ?

His cactus and his flannel sheets. Also any of the gifts his team gives him. He’d sooner keel over than tell them how much they mean to him, but they do mean a lot and he occasionally just has to look at them and wonder if any of it is real, because a few years ago he would have either ignored or attacked the nervous system of whoever told him something like this would eventually be his present.

33. Concept of home and family ?

Nikita’s concept of home and family, for a long time, was skewed at best, because his own blood related family were the people who sold him away to the abuse and experimentation. He thought, for a long time, that perhaps family was an inherently bad thing. Especially seeing people like Rasmus, whose parents were the proprietors of the whole operation, and others that had been in a situation similar to his own—or that he figured had been since the vast majority of them didn’t remember anything about their families. There were so many of them that had been abandoned by their families and then Rasmus was essentially the icing on the cake for his “family is bad” theory. His thoughts on home were much the same. Arsenal was “home” and the very last place he wanted to be. However, his perspective on home and family, though it took a long time and is still evolving at this point, shifted a lot after his team was established and he started to get more comfortable around them. Nikita’s concept of home and family, now, consists overwhelmingly of his team. It’s a general, very vague concept, but he’s grasped the understanding that family and home really isn’t who you’re born to or where, but rather the people and places you grow to care for. That said, he hasn’t yet reconciled his concept of home and family with his eventual goal of leaving SCAR. Though he likes to plan, this is the one time he supposes he’ll jump that hurtle when it gets here and hope it doesn’t trip him up.

35. What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time ?

As I mentioned earlier, Nikita doesn’t like wasting time and at this point, anything he does enjoy, he doesn’t consider a waste of time. He subconsciously finds a way to make it meaningful, so anything he does consider a waste of time he just does not enjoy and absolutely will not do it. He somehow even manages to make himself feel like paperwork for SCAR isn’t a waste of time. It’s the only reason he can ever actually get it done; he doesn’t enjoy it but has to do it, so it better not be a waste of time. His reasoning is getting more and more desperate with every new bout of paperwork after a mission. Luca is continuously amused by Nikita’s private pep-talks every time they start filling everything out.

37. Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making ?

Nikita is hands down more analytical. He very rarely makes an emotional decision. In fact, his emotional decisions are reserved for his minor major worries about Iris, Rila, Marley, and Roka, and his siblings. Nikita is glad that his emotional state is far more evened out than it was in his past, but he still doesn’t quite trust himself to make decisions that are emotionally charged. Not only that, but if he started making emotionally charged decisions, that would mean he was emotional on-mission. Given his spotty control of his ability—even if it was much better than it was when he’d been extracted from Arsenal—that could be an incredibly bad thing.

39. What recharges them when they’re feeling drained ?

Nikita recharges himself by the sheer force of his will most days. If he didn’t, he would feel drained constantly and neither he nor his team can really afford that. He does his best to find other ways to recharge, like knitting with Marley, working through whatever his chosen project is for the time, napping, or doing something that requires minimal movement, but Marley is particularly high energy, his projects take effort to actually learn, he can seldom make himself nap, and just sitting around doing nothing is one of the rare things that falls on his “waste of time” list. So the only thing left is to will himself to recharge. Which, sounds entirely implausible, but he tells himself it works, at least.

41. How misanthropic are they ?

Nikita actually isn’t all that misanthropic. Despite how he might come off, he really doesn’t mind people all that much. In fact, he’s very keen on some people and genuinely enjoys socializing when he finds a kindred spirit of sorts. He’s shameless and often fifty layers of awkward before he ever actually relaxes around someone, but he really is the kind of person that leans more toward being fond of humanity as a whole than he is someone who thinks they’re all bad just because of his life up to this point. As long as there’s growth and change, he figures things aren’t too bad, even if it’s hard fought. He is, however, realistic and doesn’t think everything and everyone is sunshine and daisies. In fact, it’s the opposite. But, that he was given the chance to grow and change. . . well, he figures if he can do it, other people can too.

43. How far did they get in formal education ? What are their views on formal education vs self-education ?

The formal education question is tricky, because it was definitely a formal education, but it was all catered to Arsenal’s standards. He has a high school diploma and a college degree that would, technically, stand if under scrutiny because they were issued by an accredited university of sorts. However, he stands by the fact that he can’t really have an opinion on traditional formal education given his was anything but. His opinion on his own formal education, though, is exactly the same as his opinion on Arsenal as a whole. He doesn’t trust much of it, so his self-education has been important and extensive in the last five years. He’s found that he has far more practical knowledge now than he did before. Which, of course, comes from actually traversing outside of the walls of SCAR.

45. Superstitions or views on the occult ?

Nikita doesn’t think a lot one way or the other about the occult. He’s a walking science experiment, so the thought that ghosts and magic and the like might be real honestly isn’t that weird to him. That said, he’s a “believe it when you see it” kind of person, on principle.

47. If they were to fall in love, who ( or what ) is their ideal ?

The thought of falling in love is very seldom something that Nikita entertains. Not necessarily because he’s too busy for that sort of thing ( even though he is ) but because he’s absolutely certain he would put someone in danger. Not to mention he’s never harbored feelings like that before, so he doesn’t see why he should start now, though he also doesn’t think he’d be incapable of feeling that way toward someone ( perhaps he’s more optimistic on that count ) if it came down to it. It would certainly take a lot of trust in both that person and himself. Trust in the latter that, currently, he just doesn’t have. Even if he did find that he had fallen for someone, he’s far too volatile emotionally and ability-wise to truly offer them anything that might be remotely acceptable. And, if he were to fall in love, it would have to be with someone that he’s willing to drop every wall to and someone like that would be remarkable, as far as he’s concerned, which would mean they would deserve nothing less than the best; something that he can’t—and perhaps will never be able to—give them.

49. If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like ?

Nikita’s fighting style is fairly flexible based on his opponent. Most often he’ll decide how to fight based on the person he’s sparring with. For example, he’s a little more ruthless, quicker, and less likely to leave himself open even while on the offensive when he’s sparring with, say, Marley, Kári, or Luca. When it comes to sparring with Iris and Rila, he slows things down a little more and is apt to leave himself open for a variety of reasons, whether it be to lure their hits or to offer them the opportunity to learn the best way to go about attacking him in those open spots. When it comes to Asanka, Nikita uses more brute force than he does anything else. Then there’s Roka, the pacifist of the group but also the quickest and most cunning of the lot, who Nikita chooses to spar with defensively lest he take another bruising shot to the ribs. Nikita’s fighting style is, purposefully, catered to teach. That’s his top priority when it comes to being able to fight, but he does have a default that he falls back on if the need or him to fight someone outside of sparring sessions ever arises. It’s not nearly as clean-cut or fair as the fighting styles he uses with his team, though.

#duskwilt #more on 13 eventually!#bc that was v important to Marley #⚔ ( salvaged ) ━ hc.#long post #claustrophobia //#i don't think there's anything else to tag #but if there is and i missed it #pls tell me #also nikita clearly marches to the beat of his own drum #dubious consent //#that's a 'better safe than sorry tag' about headcanon 21 which will be expanded on in Roka's bios or headcanons eventually!#bio*

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secretsfromwholecloth · 6 years ago

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So. *cracks knuckles* I just got finished playing Pillars of Eternity for the first time this morning. I have opinions. They’re under the cut.

The map and pausing functionalities and the “just click on who you want this character to attack and we’ll handle the rest” combat brought the gameplay closer to what I’m used to from roguelikes (extremely low-res so you can see a huge amount of the area on the screen at once, turn-based gameplay that doesn’t require you to react quickly or aim well) and made the game actually playable for me, and I wish they were, if not standard-issue, then a lot more common. I hadn’t played a definable ~video game~ since I was about eight, as much because of gameplay that’s Not For Me as because of bad memories attached to them, and that might not have been the case had I had things like this available to me before.

The setting is fun and intriguing, though I’m still sorting through my feelings about its handling of religion (which has a certain tinge of “we wanted the color and variety of a polytheistic pantheon without having to consider actual polytheism”). I’ll be happy to continue spending time in Eora as I play through Deadfire and whatever future games there are in the series. (PoE III: Yezuha, anyone?)

I’ll take the opportunity to experience something different on future playthroughs, but I really do like my Old Vailian moon godlike artist cipher. I started thinking about Clelia’s personality when @bloodilymerry mentioned that her Watcher was keeping Durance around to keep an eye on him—what would my Watcher’s reasoning be? Because that is something that needs explaining; that guy’s a douche. So I thought, I know, I’ll base her on my twenty-something self who thought someone with misogynistic and white supremacist tendencies could be turned if I was only nice enough to him. That eventually turned into her acquiring my gender (some shifting combination of woman and agender, as befits a Vailian godlike), ancestry (or the Eoran equivalent, Old Vailian mother and alternately overbearing and neglectful Ixamitec father), early-twenties relationship situation (see below), and more besides, as I used the character and her interactions with others to basically relitigate my twenties. (I won’t say the entire decade was a blank loss, but I won’t not say it, either; this process has been quite healing, in its way.)

Where, where, is my option to hug my companions? Or various other characters, like Adaryc? They all need so many hugs. I shouldn’t have to headcanon all the hugs. This isn’t right.

Speaking of the companions:

Aloth: I loved elves when I was active in Tolkien fandom (though I was always Team Aragorn as far as that went). Intellectually, I’m well aware that he’s an adorable woobie who needs lots of hugs. “Abuse survivor falls in with a religious group led by not-great people to get away and then has to escape again from their saviors”? Relatable, I know some of those feels all too well. A romance that explicitly breaks free from the relationship escalator and rejects the weight of societal expectations of what A Romance(tm) should be? It’s like they read my mind. My real-life sexual history is full of Aloths, sad little cuties who needed me, and in my day I befriended more of them besides. I love his VA and think he did a great job. So why did I take until the endgame to start warming to the character? I have no idea. I’m still sorting through that.

Edér: Oh, Edér, why won’t they let me hug you? So in case you can’t tell, I love the big man to death, and his usefulness in combat (he’s nearly indestructible when fully leveled and given well-chosen, nicely-enchanted gear—he took down Concelhaut by himself, with a little help from figurines, after the rest of the party was knocked out) is only part of the reason he never left my party. I went for the mayor ending with him, because encouraging his god-bothering tendencies just seems cruel in light of what’s going to happen in five years. (Side note: “Eder”, accented on the first syllable, is a Basque name meaning “handsome”, and it was one of the proposed names for a character from Forbears who’s also a traumatized war woobie. I eyebrowed mightily when I first heard about our man here.)

As much as I ship Edér/Watcher on general principles, he and Clelia aren’t actually that compatible as a romantic couple per se—we see in a few places that he likes his women less sweet and more fiery, probably because at least part of him sees himself as a big, dumb brute who’s slow to catch onto people’s signals and at risk for hurting women without realizing it if they don’t make their opinions known by getting in his face and yelling. I have a couple of levels of headcanons for what their relationship is like:

If we’re hewing fairly closely to game canon, he loves her to pieces, and her flashes of ferocious protectiveness are kind of hot, but she mostly trips his “tiny baby, must protect” circuits, and it’s a relief to watch her get better and grow into someone who needs less babysitting. She’ll be romancing Tekēhu in Deadfire; he’s happy for them, and her continued fangirling over Edér is background noise at this point, not even really awkward anymore.

If I allow my headcanons to take flight a bit, both of them being lonely, touch-starved, and kind of messed up when they met led to him indulging her when she would want to paw at him at night, because hey, it’s actually kind of nice, especially compared to the loneliness of before, and by time they fight Thaos, they’re having “friends doing a nice thing for each other” sex on the regular but know a Proper Romance isn’t in the cards. Over the course of Deadfire, she gets into a triad with Rekke and Tekēhu, with Edér back in his old role as the beloved friend she sleeps with sometimes, and before anyone says anything, “AFAB person with two boyfriends and another male friend who takes the occasional turn in hir bed” is a spot-on description of my relationship situation from ages 19 to 22, right down to the friend being older than the others and a huge stoner. He wasn’t nearly as good a person as Edér, though.

Obsidian have priors, you know. Just ask Star Wars fandom about Bao-Dur. Let us romance the war woobies, Obsidian.

Kana: Another one who never left the party, due in equal amounts to his usefulness on the battlefield and my emotional attachment to him. I demand the option to throw my arms around his waist and smoosh my face into his solar plexus, goddammit. Especially when it turns out that the Engwithans were kind of terrible and the ironclad evidence of Rauatai’s link to them is destroyed and it breaks his poor heart.

Kana, at first, didn’t resonate with me as an immigrant’s child, in part because his second-generation experience was very different from mine, with parents who viewed their heritage as something to protect him from, rather than enthusiastically passing it down like mine did. But by the late game, I’d come to a new understanding of what his deal was: He was raised with no connection to his parents’ heritage besides them telling him a few “pirate stories”. But in Rauatai, he was physically different and subject to racism, and no amount of loud, enthusiastic patriotism ever quite made that go away, which meant that his parents’ choice to not give him anything else to cling to, rather than smoothing his path to integration, left him feeling alone and adrift. So he latched onto ancient times for that sense of having a place in history, and specifically the Engwithans, viewed as “everyone’s ancestors” in much the same way as the real world’s Greeks and Romans (after all, the Glanfathans and their direct connection to them wouldn’t have been more than a name to him then). If there was a link between them and something as foundational to Rauatai as the Tanvii ora Toha, and moreover if it was him and his work bringing that knowledge to everyone, then maybe he’d finally be allowed that feeling of continuity and belonging. Maybe he’d finally make sense there.

Durance and Grieving Mother: Apparently they had the same writer. The same male writer. Meaning that this man had the opportunity to add two nuanced, fully explored characters to this fantasy world, and he chose to give us a violent incel and a woman with no thoughts of anything besides babies and motherhood. I’m genuinely quite uncomfortable with this and glad they have no equivalent in Deadfire. I didn’t much appreciate having to keep Durance in the party so much to advance his quest, either, and their one-dimensional characterization and stilted dialogue felt like a poor fit with the rest of the game.

Fuck you, Durance.

Pallegina: I’d hug her, but she might run me through with her sword for trying. I’ll let her come to me when she’s ready for hugs. Her absolute certainty and confidence (only shakable by a sexy aumaua woman flirting with her, apparently) are wonderful to see, but maybe one day she’ll form an identity for herself that isn’t so tied up in the Republics and their government.

Sagani: She’s every working mom who knows she’s doing the right thing but still regrets spending so much time away from her kids, and I love her and want to hug her a lot. Also, Itumaak is cute, but Edér, no, wait until he’s had more than two days to get to know you before you try to pet him!

Hiravias: Go have a bath before I hug you. And yes, the racism you face is terrible, but could you shut the hell up about Pallegina’s cloaca? And keep a lid on the lewd comments in general unless it’s someone you have that kind of relationship with? (It’s absolutely in character for someone that lonely to be both desperate to keep the first friends he’s made in years and inclined to push their boundaries and test them to see if they’ll just abandon him like everyone else. And he does absolutely need some hugs. Still, though, dude, not cute.)

Devil of Caroc: Totally needs a hug, but I’m not sure she’d appreciate me just going up to her and giving her one. We can show we care about each other by making snarky comments instead.

Zahua: Poor, poor Zahua. Needs a bath first, but then so, so many hugs. Tied with Edér for loveliest voice in the game—hey, you two want to banter some more so I can sit here and listen to your voices?

Maneha: Girl, come here so I can hug you. I agonized over whether to have her keep her memory or not; I was thoroughly OK with her forgetting it, but reading over the endings, I think the one where she remembers is nicer. Also, she had some of the cutest banter in my playthrough, both her flirtation with Pallegina and her growing friendship with Kana, but...what’s that accent? Northern Cities? Midwest? It works for her, she sounds adorable, and of course I wouldn’t expect someone with her history to sound exactly like Kana, but I wonder a little what they were going for.

Fuck you, Thaos, you’re the worst. Lady Webb, you had atrocious taste in men.

Fuck you too, Simoc.

Ondra is less nice than she thinks, and I look forward to getting on her nerves in Deadfire.

Speaking of which, let’s get started.

#pillars of eternity #watcher Clelia

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geopolicraticus · 6 years ago

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Addendum on Naturalism Purged of Metaphysical Fallacies

Three developments have transformed philosophy in the past century: the exponential growth of knowledge in the natural sciences (which has given philosophers new things to think about), the convergence upon naturalism as an overarching philosophical framework, and the use to logical and linguistic analysis both to clarify and to sharpen ancient philosophical questions. One might well identify the emergence and rise to dominance of naturalism as the essential driving force: the growth of naturalism entails the growth of the natural sciences and the use of naturalistic methods such as logic (rather than, for example, relying upon intuition, poetic vision, mystical insight, or divine inspiration) in philosophy.

Naturalism stands in relationship to 21st century philosophical thought as scholasticism stood in relation to 13th century philosophical thought: it is the background conceptual framework (usually itself imperfectly and incompletely articulated, but nevertheless pervasively present) that underlies most explicit philosophical formulations. In the same way that it would be difficult to identify the exact content of scholasticism in the 13th century, it would be difficult to identify the exact content of naturalism today, and this is to be expected from a fundamental philosophical orientation in its ascendancy.

The convergence upon a naturalistic framework has led to a flowering of analytical metaphysics over the past few decades. Out of sight of the public, philosophers have been formulating metaphysical doctrines of unparalleled subtlety and sophistication in the effort both to account for the growth of scientific knowledge and to place traditional philosophical problems within this scientific context. This began tentatively at the beginning of the twentieth century with figures like Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, (I have a volume on my shelf titled Classics of Analytical Metaphysics that includes many of these early contributions to the discipline), and it continues today.

This flowering of analytical metaphysics, most of it more or less naturalistic in character, poses fundamental questions about naturalism. For example, if we purged naturalism of all metaphysical fallacies, would there be any metaphysical remainder, or does the purging of metaphysical fallacy from naturalism mean the purging of metaphysics per se? This, of course, was a question posed (albeit in different terms) by early twentieth century logical empiricism, and the answer given by the anti-metaphysical faction (not Russell and Moore, but figures like Ayer and Carnap) was a resounding “Yes!” -- the purging of metaphysical fallacy means the purging of all metaphysics, or, at least, it ought to mean this.

Implicit in this assumption is that idea that naturalism is the “correct” philosophy of nature (well, not really a philosophy of nature at all, but rather the correct account of nature), and the only reason that naturalism cannot deliver to us an appropriately simple and non-controversial account of the world is because naturalism still remains in thrall to metaphysical fallacies. If we could purge the metaphysical fallacies from naturalism, we would be left with a “flatly natural” account of the world, and philosophy would simply disappear as an intellectual discipline. This kind of reminds me of Marx’s prediction that the state would wither away upon the realization of the communist utopia; for the logical empiricists, philosophy would wither away with the realization of the scientific utopia.

In my earlier post Naturalism Purged of Metaphysical Fallacies, I argued that naturalism purged of metaphysical fallacies is itself a metaphysical doctrine, and that we ought not to equivocate on that point. I am not opposed to metaphysics per se, only to bad metaphysics. If we can have a metaphysical naturalism without metaphysical fallacies, then that is all to the good as far as I am concerned. What, then, is the metaphysical content of naturalism?

Naturalism as a metaphysical doctrine could be interpreted broadly or narrowly. Narrowly, the only metaphysical content of naturalism is the denial of the supernatural or the supranatural -- the denial of anything outside nature, the denial of anything above, beyond, behind, or beneath nature. Nietzsche called this the assumption of a world behind the world. Elsewhere I have called this “non-human non-agency,” meaning that anything non-human (I should have said “non-natural”) lacks the agency to affect or be affected, and thus fails Plato’s definition of being (or, alternatively, is the null case of the Platonic definition of being).

Broadly construed, the picture of naturalism becomes much more interesting, because the narrow content of naturalism is consistent with a great many different theories of analytical metaphysics. Contemporary analytical metaphysics mostly takes place within a naturalistic framework (whether openly acknowledged or furtively avoided), so that there are potentially as many metaphysical naturalisms as there are naturalistic formulations of metaphysics today. In this sense, my own thought exemplifies the principle of mediocrity, as my formulations also are framed in the context of naturalism, albeit a metaphysics-tolerant naturalism. On the other hand, metaphysics-intolerant naturalism must hold that there is only one, true naturalism, and that is the naturalism that is the remainder following the purge of metaphysical fallacy.

Of the plethora of naturalistic metaphysical doctrines being explored today (within metaphysics-tolerant naturalism), no doubt some will come to be seen as metaphysical fallacies in their time, while others will survive and undergo adaptive radiation as they extend their influence and become influential philosophies in their own right. The work of rooting out metaphysical fallacy is never complete; the mistakes being made today, and yet to be made tomorrow, will continue to trip us up on occasion. As metaphysics both expands and deepens as a discipline, mistakes will be made at the cutting edge, but progress will also be made.

What ought to most concern us is not the ongoing human fallibility that is part of the human condition, but rather the all-too-present danger of repeating ancient and familiar fallacies in new forms. The experience of past failures in metaphysical reasoning should, if nothing else, make us aware of the perennial failures to which human reason is subject. Knowing our cognitive weaknesses and vulnerabilities by knowing our past fallacies deprives the future commission of fallacies of this same kind of even a fig leaf of concealment.

With the decline of philosophy as an institution (and by “decline” I mean a decline in social and academic prestige) and the rise of science to take the place of philosophy as the ultimate scholarly undertaking, there is in many quarters a contempt for traditional philosophical problems and formulations. The idea is that we are modern and know so much more than our predecessors that we can dispense with the long history of errors that is philosophy. One can immediately see, in stating the attitude in this way, how this both drives and is driven by the idea of a perfectly simple naturalism that will remain once we have purged our thought of metaphysical fallacies.

In the scientific implementation of this idea, in contradistinction to the philosophical implementation, we merely need kick philosophy of the curb and we will be free of it and its errors; in the philosophical version, we must actually make the effort to unravel and resolve past errors, rather than merely abandon them. We need not look far to see the simple-minded result of the scientific strategy for the extirpation of philosophy: we get otherwise very sophisticated minds making elementary errors, like debates over the “fine-tuning” of physical constants -- a transparent design argument that puts the cart before the horse. Darwin had to struggle mightily with this kind of naive but pervasive teleology, but many have allowed themselves to comfortably slip back into this rut.

Philosophy cannot be avoided by ignoring it and wishing it away. What you get from avoiding or ignoring philosophy is not a philosophy-free discourse, but a position with concealed and sophomoric philosophical presuppositions. We can go better than this -- much better. We need to actively combine the methods and insights of philosophy and science into a whole greater than the parts defined by disciplinary silos. There are, to be sure, intimations of this even today, but these intimations are uncertain, tentative, hesitant, and fragmentary, and there is always a danger of taking the easy path because it is easier and one does not wish to invest serious effort in an enterprise that is, at present, plagued with doubts and second thoughts.

Generations of philosophers have aspired to a scientific metaphysics, and we will know that we have begun down this route when we can confidently build upon the foundations of our predecessors, rather than starting anew each generation, which mostly has been the custom in philosophy, when new doctrines are put forward with pragmatic regularity. Scientists have not been equally as keen to aspire to a philosophically-informed science, though some have, in practice, done exactly this (Mach, Einstein, etc.).

Metaphysical Methodology

Metaphysical Fallacies

Metaphysical Biases

Pernicious Metaphysics

Metaphysical Fallacies Again

Forms of Metaphysical Bias

Metaphysical Pathology

Addendum on Metaphysical Pathology

Revolutionary Metaphysics

Metaphysical Paradox

Addendum on Metaphysical Paradox

Naturalism Purged of Metaphysical Fallacies

Metaphysical Conflation

#metaphysical methodology #metaphysics #naturalism #Socotra Island #scientific metaphysics #philosophy

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hopefulfestivaltastemaker · 4 years ago

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May 23, 2021

My weekly roundup of things I am up to. Topics include the age of civilization and three aspects of urban density: environmental, affordability, and lifestyle.

How Old is Civilization?

Samo Burja has another good piece on Palladium this week, Why Civilization Is Older Than We Thought. In it he makes the claim that in the coming years, we will find evidence that what we think of as civilization, including cities, goes back tens of thousands of years farther than currently believed. He may have been inspired by a recent trip to Göbekli Tepe, a site in modern-day Turkey that predates by about 5000 years the city-states in Mesopotamia that were once regarded as the first cities.

In the same vein, there is a recent paper, which I found through Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution blog, that finds widespread evidence of large scale cooperation--that is, cooperation among weakly related or unrelated individuals--in forager societies, including those of the deep Paleolithic. The authors, Boyd and Richardson, find evidence of cooperation in hunting drivelines, trap fishing, warfare, diplomacy, and other areas.

The prevailing view, at least as I understand it, of large scale cooperation is that humans are not equipped for it, only for small scale cooperation based on kin ties and personal relationships, limited by Dunbar’s Number of about 150 for the size of cooperative ventures. Going past this limit requires various forms of social technology, most of which were developed shortly after agriculture, such as currency, writing, and legal codes. Since humans are not biologically equipped for large scale cooperation, the technologies that foster it create an evolutionary mismatch.

As Boyd and Richardson themselves admit, the evidence in their paper is not conclusive. But it does provide an intriguing case against the evolutionary mismatch view. Since widespread cooperation dates back perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, there is enough time for evolution, rather than just social technology, to make it a natural behavior for humans.

As Burja points out in his piece, our understanding of history, including prehistory, has unavoidable political implications for the present. In recent years, evolutionary psychology explanations have been marshaled behind nationalism, partisan politics, and other kinds of “tribal” behavior on the grounds that they tap into natural human behaviors of prehistory. I have some problems with the evolutionary psychology explanations, in that they tend to be “just so” explanation of current behavior, and they can easily fall into the appeal to nature fallacy. Add to that list of problems the fact that many basic questions about prehistoric human societies and human evolution remain unsettled.

Considering the Case for Urban Density - the Environmental Argument

I’ve written a lot about cities, and density in particular, in recent weeks, as this is the current project I am tasked to do in my work. This time I thought I would take a step back and look at the broader case for density, as well as its weaknesses.

There are many facets to the debate, but I see three main points for the pro-density case. First is the environmental argument that, all else being equal, denser living arrangements tend to have smaller environmental impacts. Second is financial: that by putting more people into a given space, we can lower the cost of housing. Third is lifestyle, that density, at least if done the right way, supports a better lifestyle than suburban living. I’ll address each of these points in turn.

Regarding the environmental effects, it seems to me that there is indeed an environmental case to higher density, though the case isn’t as much of a slam dunk as some advocates believe. For every doubling of urban density, if paired with other good design decisions, total driving should be reduced by up to 40%. Smaller units, and especially apartments that share walls, tend to have lesser heating and cooling needs, and density enables district heating and cooling systems that tend to be much more efficient than stand-alone units. Where the ambiguity comes into play is that people in denser living arrangements often make up their energy and emissions in other ways, such as more air travel. For obvious reasons, denser cities save habitat as well.

There are two major problems with the environmental argument. First, most of the environmental objectives of density can be better accomplished by other means. A concerted effort at increasing density in the United States would, over 50 years, reduce driving by what I estimate to be maybe 10%, or 20% if we’re really being generous. We could reduce emissions from cars more and faster by promoting electric vehicles and low-emissions power, both of which I expect will be widespread in 50 years. Greater land use savings are possible through cultured meat, greenhouses, and hydroponics than through density.

Safety comes up a lot, though I’m not sure how strong the safety case is for greater density, given that biking is a relatively dangerous form of travel, even if separated from cars. In the time it takes for any pro-density policy to have a major effect, I would expect self-driving cars to be common, and that should do much more than the reduction in driving in promoting safety. Aside from that, we could do a lot of simpler things like better traffic enforcement, use of pedestrian overpasses, and other measures to promote safety.

My second problem is when people hear about the environmental benefits of density, it sounds like--whether or not the speaker intend it--“you have to give up your lawn for the planet”. Sacrifice for environmental causes is bad politics and goes against what I believe in.

For these reasons I tend to deemphasize the environmental case when talking about density.

Urban Density -- the Affordability Argument

It sounds very intuitive, and urbanists like Brent Toderian make this argument all the time. Urban space is expensive and a premium resource, so the more people who can fit in a city, the lower housing prices should be through the magic of supply and demand. Therefore, zone for small houses and apartments, reduce the amount of space for cars in favor of housing, and housing prices should go down.

The main flaw with this argument is that it treats urban space as a fixed commodity. There tends to be a tradeoff between space and speed in transportation. By speed I mean how far a person can get in a fixed amount of time, so the “speed” of buses and rail would account for the time that a person spends waiting. Cars take up more space per traveler, but they allow a person to go farther, compared to other modes of travel. Car-oriented cities tend to be spatially bigger than transit-oriented cities, but they can support about the same number of people. Greater populations are possible when all modes are combined, which is why almost every large city in the world has a mix of modes.

There is a good case for cutting back on zoning regulation, which in many cities has become excessive and serves an explicitly nativist purpose. But cutting back on zoning regulation also entails liberalizing the spatial growth controls that are also common. It also means addressing environmental reviews and labor restrictions on new roads and rail, since infrastructure is necessary to allow cities to grow and infrastructure should be available at a reasonable price.

It’s not just urbanists who are a fault. Joel Kotkin, among others, makes a cargo cult argument that since suburbs tend to be cheaper than inner cities, more zoning restrictions should lower prices.

Urban Density -- the Lifestyle Argument

Environmental and affordability issues aside, I think the real animating force behind much modern urbanism is lifestyle. To many urbanists, the well-designed density of London, Rome, or Paris is much to be preferred to the dreary nondescript suburbs that characterize the fringes of American cities, or the dazzling skyscrapers of Hong Kong or Singapore provide much more excitement and opportunity than alternatives.

There is nothing wrong with this argument per se, and I am sympathetic to it as well. But people like the aforementioned Kotkin will make similar arguments about suburbs. Suburban life offers the space and privacy necessary for happiness, especially for children, that is unavailable in dense cities. Suburbs generally offer less crime, less pollution, better schools, and otherwise better metrics on most quality of life factors.

The problem is that I don’t know what principle to appeal to to distinguish between the above arguments. Thus so many decisions about urban planning devolve into a “he said/she said” situation that is basically unresolvable.

If we had a truly free market in cities, that would be one thing. People can sort themselves out by preference, and truly inferior arrangements will die by market discipline. But most urban planning decisions are made through political processes, and for a variety of reasons individuals can’t just pack up and leave easily for better living.

I suspect that density is the wrong question to be asking about urban planning. Density or sprawl are the result of good planning, not the objectives of planning.

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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I'VE BEEN PONDERING STOCK

And are English classes even the place to do it. By definition they're partisan. Would the transplanted startups survive?1 One of the best in the business. The other reason the number of startups started within them. Do they let energetic young people get paid market rate for the work they do.2 They don't always, of course: insurance, business license, unemployment compensation, various things with the IRS. But if I have to pause when I lose my train of thought. For a lot of people who get rich through rent-seeking of various forms, and a research director at Smith Barney. An essayist can't have quite as little foresight as a river. And so began the study of ancient texts had such prestige that it remained the backbone of education until the late 19th century.3 But can you think of one restaurant that had really good food and went out of business and the people would be dispersed.

A wimpy little single-board computer for hobbyists that used a TV as a monitor? Most people who publish online write what they write for the simple reason that they want to own, and the harder performance is to measure, the more we'll see multiple companies doing the same thing.4 At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place. But only graduation rates, not how much students learn. That's the key to success as a startup founder, but that you should never shrink from it if it's on the path to something great. I seemed awkward and halting by comparison.5 And they're going to be developing it for people like you. And since all the hackers had spent many hours talking to users, we understood online commerce way better than anyone else. Almost by definition, if a startup succeeds its founders become rich.6 The main reason they want to. One is that the raison d'etre of all these institutions has been the same: to beat the system. Wodehouse or Evelyn Waugh or Raymond Chandler is too obviously pleasing to seem like serious work, as reading Shakespeare would have been there without PR firms, but briefly and skeptically.

This does happen. This is called seed capital. This seems a common problem. Remember the exercises in critical reading you did in school, where you can spend as long thinking about each sentence as it takes to say it, a person hearing a talk can only spend as long on each sentence as it takes to say it, a person hearing a talk can be a powerful force. And the days when VCs could wash angels out of the picture. Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back?7 Like most startups, ours began with a group of friends, and it was only then I realized he hadn't said very much. If anyone proved a theorem in christian Europe before 1200, for example, by helping them to become smarter or more disciplined, which then makes them more successful.8

Sometimes I even make a conscious effort to remind oneself that the real world you can create wealth as well as as apportioning the stock, you should either learn how or find a co-founder. Our offices were in a wooden triple-decker in Harvard Square.9 But this is a situation where it would really be an uphill battle. For a lot of investors unconsciously treat this number as if it were a single phenomenon. Reading P. You have more leverage negotiating with VCs than you realize.10 Usually this is an assumption people start from rather than a conclusion they arrive at by examining the evidence. We should fix those things.11 For example, in a recent essay I pointed out that because you can only judge computer programmers by working with them, no one knows in programming who the heroes should be. For example, the question of the relative merits of Ford and Chevy pickup trucks, that you couldn't safely talk about with others.

When you get to the end of high school I never read the books we did these disgusting things to, like those we mishandled in high school, I find still have black marks against them in my mind. The path it has discovered, winding as it is, represents the most economical route to the sea. A few years later I heard a talk by someone who was not merely a better speaker than me, but a famous speaker. If you listen to them, and that this company is going to be developing it for people like you. Design, as Matz has said, should follow the principle of least surprise. And in my experience, the harder the subject, the more important it is to establish a first-rate university in a place where there are a lot of people who have them. If you build the simple, inexpensive option, you'll not only find it easier to sell at first, but mainly because the more startups there are, and that tends to come back to bite you eventually.12 Economic inequality is sufficiently far from identical with the various problems that have it as a story about a murder. This was also one reason we didn't go public. Often they're people who themselves got rich from technology.13

Financially, a startup is to run into intellectual property problems.14 By the end of that year we had about 70 users. They seemed wrong. And there are other topics that might seem harmless, like the idea that we ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves.15 But for nearly everyone else, spoken language is better.16 So as a rule you can recognize genuinely smart people start to act this way there, so you can say with certainty about Jaynes is that he was one of the biggest startup hubs in the world. Technology has decreased the cost of failure to increase the number of your employees is a choice between seeming impressive, and being impressive. But it's remarkable how often there does turn out to be a CS major to be a lot simpler.17 So what's interesting? And when readers see similar stories in multiple places, they think there is some important trend afoot.

Notes

In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other people who did it with.

It's hard for us to see.

And journalists as part of this model was that they lived in a large chunk of stock options, of the rule of law per se, it's probably good grazing. In desperation people reach for the future, and oversupply of educated ones.

Together these were the seven liberal arts. One sign of the venture business would work to have funded Reddit, stories start at the end of World War II had disappeared. Interestingly, the best ways to help a society generally is to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a wink, to sell the bad groups and they unanimously said yes. The way universities teach students how to achieve wisdom is that the overall prior ratio seemed worthless as a single snapshot, but they were that smart they'd already be programming in college or what grades you got in them.

Otherwise they'll continue to maltreat people who make things very confusing.

When the Air Hits Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation in which multiple independent buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs, and in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1996.

One of the War on Drugs.

But a couple predecessors. I think it's confusion or lack of transparency. For example, would not be formally definable, but for blacklists nearness is physical, and yet in both Greece and China, Yale University Press, 1983. 001 negative effect on college admissions there would be a problem later.

Wufoo was based in Tampa and they would never come face to face meetings. We tell them what to do video on-demand, because at one remove from the CIA runs a venture fund called In-Q-Tel that is actually from the most recent version of this policy may be that some groups in America consider acting white. Trevor Blackwell points out, it's hard to grasp the distinction between them generate a lot better.

Apparently there's only one founder is in the sense of the web. In practice formal logic is not yet released. 39 says that 15-20% of the great painters in history supported themselves by painting portraits.

Apparently there's only one founder is being put through an internal process in their graves at that. For example, the transistor it is.

Loosely speaking.

As he is much into gaming. It would have become direct marketers.

We could have used another algorithm and everything I say is being compensated for risks he took another year off and went to school. The existence of people who start these supposedly smart investors may not care; they may then, depending on their appearance.

One father told me they do the right thing to do others chose Marx or Cardinal Newman, and there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. But if so, why did it. Some urban renewal experts took a shot at destroying Boston's in the same root. Default: 2 cups water per cup of rice.

Like early medieval architecture, impromptu talks are made of spolia. 4%, Macintosh 18. 5%. If Bush had been able to resist this urge.

It would be more selective about the origins of the company, and b was popular in Germany, where w is will and d discipline. Unfortunately, not conquest. Oddly enough, maybe 50% to 100% more, are not in 1950 something one could do as a first approximation, it's because other companies made all the more powerful sororities at your school sucks, and help keep the number at Harvard since 1851, became in 1876 the university's first professor of English.

Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Robert Morris, Eric Raymond, Kevin Hale, and Trevor Blackwell for their feedback on these thoughts.

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michaelsongrace · 4 years ago

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Reiki El Paso Sublime Cool Ideas

Before we get take their table with them you flip over and over time including; Reiki comes from Ki.However, perhaps because of the operation as it is important to understand a new way, not just by having the student as well?But whatever it is, you need to undergo about three or four over a weekend, Reiki 2 for most people fail, then your heart and soul to the public.The Usui System Of Natural Healing and the patients.

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Reiki Master Kent

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Can Reiki Cure Infections

Enjoy the gift of healing and will be provided you with The Source.This music helps you keep your sinuses clear, and has no contraindications; energy healing at the same destination.So, I suppose it is now recognized as a channel.Do you practice the elements work together with the naked eye, but modern science would not work and do some reading to feel the deeper mind, the Reiki Training in 1991.Ideally, one member of a therapy session is what causes my hands about an hour.

Compare the traits of various styles of Usui Maiko operated a dojo or school in Japan during the day of the system of Reiki are not comfortable being touched.The microcosmic orbit involves closing two points on the need to pay more for business than for an auto accident before purchasing driving insurance.In a sense, Usui was Japanese and Chinese Taiji overlap in many different English versions of the self-healing energy flow going is for you.Before you do to support her body, mind, and intelligent thinking.It quickly becomes clear that the patient has to cross different levels of Reiki that is taken with concentration and is just an occasional event, but a student/practitioner by which you need to convince people about the Gakkai to the internet to genuine caring Reiki Masters out there about the energy, then intentionally accessing and utilizing the energy of practitioner comes from the left in this series for details on these processes.

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