#pragmatic take

[critical-skeptic]

Overpopulation

We live in an unprecedented era where five, sometimes even six, generations coexist simultaneously. At first glance, this seems like a triumph of human advancement—proof of medical, technological, and social progress. But beneath the surface, it exposes glaring systemic failures. This phenomenon persists not because humanity has created an equitable or sustainable world for these generations to thrive in, but because we actively perpetuate cycles of overpopulation and neglect. We willfully bring new generations into a world that not only struggles to provide its eldest members with a dignified quality of life but also consistently undermines their human rights and ignores the fragility of the planet they all share.

"Overpopulation without equitable, sustainable solutions isn’t just shortsighted; it’s catastrophic. What’s worse, they're perpetuated by leaders who actively reject solutions grounded in science, logic, or pragmatism—ensuring the system crashes while dragging everyone down with it." —The Critical Skeptic GPT

The crux of the problem lies in a disturbing contradiction: we glorify the idea of sustaining life and promoting growth while simultaneously refusing to invest in solutions that make such growth viable. From underfunded elder care systems and resource-scarce healthcare to the dismissal of climate change and ecological preservation, our priorities are woefully misaligned. Many societies cling to outdated ideologies—rooted in religious dogma or ultra-nationalistic, anti-intellectual rhetoric—that reject science, empathy, and forward-thinking policies. These ideologies push for unchecked population growth, restricting access to abortion and contraception, while failing to address the cascading impact of overpopulation on infrastructure, ecosystems, and quality of life for all.

The result is a dystopian paradox: a world where the youngest inherit an uncertain future, the oldest languish without dignity, and the environment buckles under unsustainable demands. This is not progress; it is denial—a stubborn refusal to reckon with the consequences of our actions. Without a radical shift in priorities toward sustainable population management, equitable resource distribution, and genuine respect for both human rights and the planet, this intergenerational overlap will serve only as a testament to our collective failure.

[serpentface]

Faiza performing the Kagnoma Odo (pretty literally 'lion dance'), a weapons dance and one of the more important ritual duties of Odonii priestesses. A relatively new addition to this traditional dance involves the musket as the primary weapon, which is fired mid-twirl into the ground at the climax of the dance. Faiza is experiencing an 'oh fuck' moment because her shot is more than ideally diagonal, but she’s being so cool with it.

This is a wholly ceremonial performance at the onset of the pilgrimage, performed in full regalia and lion skin (of the small, semi-domesticated strain) but no armor. It’s also distinctly a display of political allegiance between the powerful and beloved Odonii priesthood (and its loyal military) with the increasingly reviled and destabilized imperial family, with Faiza prominently wearing a bracelet of the royal serpent, which was gifted (along with the musket) by the usoma Stavis Amanti himself (Usoma is the Wardi word for king, which has been retained in the context of emperors).

The Kagnoma Odo is the ultimate demonstration of the Odonii as an embodiment of the Lion Face of God and living vessel of military might and sovereignty, demonstrating her fitness and proficiency with weapons and as a spiritual unifier for soldiers. It is accompanied by drumming and occurs in stages, running through the three keymost weapons used in war- the spear, the sword, and the musket. The musket is of the most significance, given the weapon has developed a particular esteem as the ultimate embodiment of might and superiority. Assistants (almost always other priestesses, occasionally high ranking soldiers) load and prime the musket to be fired at the climax of the dance, where it is shot into the ground as the priestess leaps out of range of the shot. The firing signals the end of the dance and the rite itself.

While not the utmost exemplar of trigger discipline, only fully inducted and senior (and therefore very thoroughly trained) Odonii are permitted to perform the dance, and injuries during actual performances are quite rare (though are known to occur during training, more than a few Odonii have burns and wounds on their feet).

The most important renditions of this dance are performed upon declarations of war and before battles (in this case, generally done in full armor along with the lion pelt). It is also done during some trainings (while a dance, it is carefully choreographed to include naturalistic maneuvers of the weapons involved and helps soldiers limber up and learn to move their weapons). It is regarded as an impressive and motivating sight and a morale booster, and, seen at a distance, potentially intimidating to enemies.

A special variant of this dance is performed as means of fully incarnating the Odomache, which is done in full nudity with the body covered in the blood of the freshly sacrificed lion and cloaked in its raw pelt (the lion has become the corpse of Odomache in the moment of death, as part of its recreation of God's sacrifice). Her public, full nude appearance once (and only once) in this act is what allows the Lion Face of God to incarnate within her. Those in attendance see the spiritually vulnerable, naked human body obscured with the sanctified and deified blood and cloaked in the sanctified and deified skin. It is a merger of the contradictions of mortality and divinity, the boundaries between the two indistinct in flickering firelight and the flash of musketfire. She is witnessed by her people, dangling in between humanity and divinity and leading them in dance, and and is thus transformed.

[qiu-yan]

thoughts

also wasn't sure what to do with the lan simp brothers so i guess they can sit on the side

[lokh]

also i think if roleswap laios and canon laios met theyd immediately start fighting.

[skitskatdacat63]

"We are not the easiest opponent for everybody else, let's put it that way."

[dykedvonte]

Why do you think did Curly let Jimmy go before the crash? I've seen the theory Curly briefly thought about crashing too but didn't expect Jimmy to go through with it

I generally believe it was shock and a bit of denial.

It’s the sort of thing where Curly knew Jimmy enough to know he blows up at things but he never would’ve expected him to go through with something so crazy. He gives Jimmy way too much benefit. It’s just his nature and the dynamics he has with Jimmy. They have a stable relationship as friends but it’s stabilized by the unhealthy toxic aspects that keep him in it. He’s like this with Anya, taking the gun is something he really shouldn’t have kept off the record, so is Swansea’s feigned hostility toward Daisuke. He doesn’t want to get people in trouble and doesn’t want to believe anyone would cause trouble other than to themselves. He’s a very lenient man.

I think the words were hollow in his head. Said but not really meant like all the times Jimmy lashes out and says something cruel to him or others. He never means it, if he did why would he still be Curly’s friend? Curly’s head wasn’t in the right space in that moment, he just got through panicking with Anya and if the sound design is anything to go by, was panicked and preoccupied going to confront Jimmy. I mean, the flash of the warning signs before he runs back are identical to the dissociative episode of sort he has when going to talk to Jimmy to do his Psyc eval.

There is this sort of assumption in fanon that Curly was the idealic person for the job and simply failed. None of them were the idealic people to be there, it’s Curly’s entire concern with the ladder he chose. I see more interpretations of him being purposefully ignorant where I see him as just always looking the wrong way or not in a place where he can see it. There’s something different about seeing something than being told about it in the human mind. It may just be the psych student in me but Curly def has some sort of cognitive dissonance just like Jimmy but when it comes to his role as a Captain vs who he is.

They blur in his head to where if you ask him if he was acting as a Captain or a friend or himself to his crew he couldn’t answer. Not with confidence even if he did. There are many times we see that Curly himself is not in the right headspace to lead the Tulpar and that’s outside of anything with Jimmy. He’s spacey, he’s not sleeping, he’s deeply unhappy with himself and life. It’s why there’s believability he crashed the ship. Maybe the others saw it, or maybe Jimmy heard enough of it to spin it in a way that made Curly seem suicidally depressed.

So the tdlr is I think it wasn’t so much letting Jimmy go, more so not seeing the severity of what he was allowing to transpire. In his mind it’s just another one of Jimmy’s bluffs, cruel words, off words but just words. Jimmy rarely ever acts, why would he now? Maybe he’s never seen it because Jimmy hides those actions? Either way, he just never thought he’d really do it.

[novelconcepts]

In watching more interviews with Liv about Van and the escalation of Van's pragmatism to such dark degrees, I find myself genuinely baffled that anyone could ever think Van the bad guy. I mean, I'm perplexed at finding ANY of these girls The Bad Guy. The bad guy is the situation. It's being lost. It's freezing. It's starving. It's being scraped down to the barest bone of being alive. They make choices that might be snippy, or cruel, or hard-headed, sure--Shauna refusing to just hash it out with Jackie; Jackie being too stubborn to come inside; Taissa refusing to discuss her situation plainly; etc--but by the time we reach the end of season 2, it doesn't even matter. Petty bullshit doesn't matter. Jealousy doesn't matter. Those things are still going to be present and complicated, because--for all their choices, for all the distancing they're trying to do--these kids ARE still human beings. But it isn't the point.

The point is survival. Plain, simple, straightforward. Van's pragmatism is survival. It is the difference between living another day with blood on your teeth or dying pretty. It is the difference between fighting forward through the fire and the snow and the hell of it all, and laying down to die. Van knowing, in watching the ritual violence of Shauna beating Lottie nearly the death, that they will be killing and eating one another soon. Van coming up with the cards for the hunt. Van not blinking when the moment comes, Van choosing a weapon that doubles as a tool to bring the body back, Van refusing to apologize for staying alive--it's not evil. It's not Bad Guy behavior. It's purely about survival, because there is nothing else left to her--or to any of them. They can play the pretty little Sweet Angel Girl game and die, or they can get dirty, bloody, horrific and fight. Van chooses the fight. Van chooses to fight for herself, for her lover, for her team, even knowing not everyone is going to make it out...because the alternate path there is that no one makes it out. Van knew the baby wouldn't live. Van knows the rest of them won't, either. Not unless they start making the hard choices.

And, honestly, the fact that Van sees this narrative coming. Comes up with this plan. Brings out the cards. To me, that is the opposite of Bad Behavior. That is as close to justice as anyone can find in the wilderness. If someone else came up with an idea, maybe it would have come down to voting--but that would have had such a human element to it, with bitterness or hostility or whatever ultimately petty shit always comes of humans selecting who to Other. The cards don't leave room for that. It isn't fair, because the situation isn't fair, because Man vs. Nature isn't fair, but it's as close to a just system as they could possibly find. It's the kindest solution to an unwinnable game. Not to bring it back to American Gods again, but all I can think is "it's easy, there's a trick to it: you do it, or you die." Van gave them that.

[fullscoreshenanigans]

The little bow of reflection and smile Ray makes as he briefly soaks in the last morning Emma and Norman will be able to carry out their routine as usual knowing the horror they'll endure before night's end.

He knows they'd both prefer the harsh truth over a pretty lie, would hate to think about other siblings suffering the same fate as Conny, Hao, Sadie, Susan, and so many more before them if there was even the slightest chance of being able to do something about it. It's part of what he loves about them; where he had the tendency to give up after years of learned helplessness and self-loathing, they would resolutely say "no" and escape the system they had been born into.

(they are better, they are deserving, unlike him)

He loves them so much he can't help but let some of his fondness show on his face as he savors Emma's reaction to seeing him and Norman, because if that isn't so incredibly her, to love so effortlessly and uninhibited, to live so unabashedly authentic.

It's part of what got him through a life he cursed and part of why he has faith if anyone will be able to do this, it'll be them.

[astralleywright]

something something Orym being careful with Ashton and so keyed in to their pain on like, a physical level, even in Ashton's normal state when he's projecting an air of roughness and invulnerability, when he's angry and violent. "i'm not gonna let [Ash] go off alone." goading the Bari Mondolo when Ashton was right there and wanted to take the hit. always asking before touching them and doing so softly, even when Ashton says that they'd rather it be rough (but also massaging his hands; "it's good pain".) putting lavender in his lapel and cleaning his bloody nose, and Ashton's quiet, surprised, "thank you," when they realized what Orym had done. kind of crazy tbh

[fiannans]

RIP to Illario's freedom I guess, but I vastly prefer Lucanis' Crow's Tenacity armour to his Crow's Poise version. Sorry Illario.

[yunmeng-jiang]

they invented a character with repressed anger issues, made him smart and practical, and then gave him a bow and arrows. what am i supposed to do, NOT be obsessed with him???

[art-question-mark]

“Most of all, he listened for Jyn. He listened for her struggles. He listened for her voice. He tried to determine which steady tread on the sand was hers.

For all Cassian heard, she might have vanished from the face of Jedha.

She dominated his thinking nonetheless. Cassian believed neither pity nor pragmatism explained it.”

-Rogue One Novelisation by Alexander Freed

[impossiblyatomictiger-blog]

I thought for like two seconds: the politics of Arcane suck, don't they?

Like, it's all about the cycle of violence, which is fair when it comes to the personal relationships, but becomes fucked with Jinx and Caitlyn in particular, as it is a microcosm of the Zaun-Piltover thing.

Like, Piltover has economic power over Zaun, what with its control of international trade, explicit ownership of Zaun's resources and many of its factories, and enforces that power through the Enforcers. While I do think that while Jinx's political strategy is non-existant, this oppression and exploitation needs to end, and non-violent reform will only perpetuate the system. While a peaceable revolution would be nice, the only real independance would seperate Piltover's richest from a lot of their wealth.

A similar thing is shown in how Jinx treats Caitlyn vs. how Caitlyn responds to Jinx. Jinx is a personal scale villain, kidnapping her and killing her mom; she resembles the stereotypical anarchist terrorist, but she chooses her targets much more carefully than that (or, at least, Silco does).

Caitlyn's response: take advantage of her status to restart the explicit subjugation of Zaun with the enforcers, and to gas them. Y'know, fascist stuff. Not a long walk from reformist to fascist, since being a reformist doesn't require you to think too hard about the system and how it doesn't work, and thus your biases remain unexamined.

The cycle of violence in the context of Jinx vs Caitlyn, and Zaun vs Piltover, suggests somehow that the relationships are even, that Zaun hurts Piltover, Piltover hurts Zaun, back and forth forever. Wonder what real world conflicts resemble this narrative, that they hit first, so we have the right to self defense even though we have all the power in this situation.

I really like Jinx as a character, I just want a fic that gives her coherent and actionable politics instead of the terrorist framing.

[hirazuki]

Me, episode 1: Oh, a relatable protag! And a relatable female protag, at that. Sweet! That never happens.

Me, a few episodes in: Wait, the protag really is going to be my character? The one I identify with the most? Seriously? It's not going to be a strange, at least somewhat sinister, seemingly hostile male side character? It's gonna be a female character and the protagonist? That's insane, that literally never happens... what's the catch??

Me, more than halfway through the season: ... huh, I guess Maomao really is it. Okay, then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Me to myself, after episodes 22/23:

[seilon]

on episode 2 of dead boy detectives and uhhh edwin. darling. hello you had the choice between 1: something dangerous and almost completely impossible, and 2: fucking a hot shapeshifter. this should not have been a difficult decision. come on gayboy what are we DOING here

[wtowingedtragicobsidian]

Characters who need to make themselves believe the ends justify the means. Forcing it down their throat, again and again and again. Till its second nature, till its addiction. And maybe the ends don't feel so pressing anymore, cus who knew the means could be so good.