#purely for the sake of my notes i'd just... rather not have to deal with that. as much fun as it is to watch these debates

[ultimateinferno]

Funny thing about atheist ex-Christians is you'd expect there to be some kind of comradery between them and at times there is, but also you can consistently rely upon ex-Protestants and ex-Catholics to bicker about theology as much as any fervent believer so long as you maintain the charade that the whole thing is strictly academically secular. The culture runs far deeper than any spirituality ever will.

And by god, I enjoy it every time it happens. I love standing on the sidelines to see them bemoan about doctrine they've alleged stopped giving a shit about all while sitting on the sidelines pitching more fuel for the debate regarding the nature of the Virign Mary, knowing full well as an ex-Mormon I could derail the conversation in an instant if I truly wanted to.

[soviet-sin-corner]

All the light we cannot see (Movie review)

quick note: when I say 'genre' I mean WW2 movies, this is wholly just my very much fallible opinion, I literally just watched the movie this is in no way wholly comprehensive and thought through AND I have not read the book. Oh and spoilers

I just finished 'All The Light We cannot Sea' not that anyone asked for my opinion, but it was a really cute story! I love the connection between Marie and Werner through the Professor though in terms of the romance aspect... I feel like they sort of threw away Marie's character for the sake of it. Werner being head over heels fully make sense even if it is not logical seeing as for him she is the embodiment of 13.10 and therefore all the hope, care and love that it represents. That aside, love the fact that reference was made to the elite schools. Since it's been something I'd been itching to see depicted more often in second world war era movies ever since I watched 'Napola; Before The Fall', though it is validly and naturally not referred to/depicted that often seeing as there are more interesting/important stories to tell.

Either way I do wish that the season was a bit longer there was a lot of potential in terms of building tension and suspense with Werner and the curly haired liar and there would have been more time to potentially flesh out Marie and Werner's dynamic, but then again this is probably just due to the fact that I'm comparing this to the pacing of other war series (e.g Das Boot 2018) which really take their time lathering on suspense and have a much longer run time. So, the shorter run time of this series taken into account, the pacing was simply fine. Though I liked the series over all it was in a sense (for me) truly mediocre.

The story line with Marie and her father, Etienne Leblanc's whole shebang and Werner's back story were all very interesting, but (and again this is purely and wholly my own opinion, I literally just finished the season and decided to write this no deeper thought or analysis has been put into this) the individual aspects merge, however cohesively, only to still outshine the overarching plot or rather perhaps more correctly, the present of the story. It is much more about characters going through a plotline set in a war than a war movie... If that makes any sense? The focus is very much on the past and the characters individually, much more than the current events and actions and though they are in no way unimportant or underplayed, they definitely play second fiddle in my opinion. This is more prominent in the 2nd episode onwards.

This isn't a bad thing by any means, but if you're going into this with your focus on the war aspect of the film then you won't be disappointed and not really underwhelmed but simply... well, whelmed, I suppose. I wouldn't say to go into this expecting a love story either, because it is... at least to me, not. Rather this movie is more a 'connection two people (unknowingly) share and their development and life up until they meet, oh and also its set in a war' type movie. There's a lot of focus on the softer human aspect (which we love to see) and the before/leading up to aspect, but without building a lot suspense which one may expect from a war movie (not that there wasn't suspense just not that much again in comparison to other war series like Das Boot 2018).

Somethings I really loved about this movie though was Etienne and his whole deal (simply because it's something I know and enjoy encountering in this genre), Marie and her father, like fr fr that whole storyline was actually perfect beginning to end and lastly Marie's blindness was perhaps the best most new and most refreshing and truly and addition to this genre on a whole. I'm not saying that the experience of being blind was well portrayed, seeing as I myself am not and have never been blind, but in a genre that is allergic to diversity it's always nice to see the portrayal of experiences that deviate from the 'norm'. ESPECIALLY, representation of people with disabilities and not just a oh look at this poor soldier who just got shot will never walk again we're just going to push him off screen, pretend he doesn't exist and get back to the boy with guns. I'd love to see more representation of disabled people being people and not just something to be pitied in this genre.

My biggest problem with this film is it all being in English. I love it when the respective characters speak their respective languages. But also it made some part a little unclear as to who could understand what and what language was actually currently being spoken. But that's really just me being nitpicky its fine as is just not what I prefer, lol.

Anyways all in all the series was a solid 7.5/10 and again I was beyond stoked to see more Elite school depiction and the story truly was very cute (Also if you really liked the suspense and war aspect of this series then watch Das Boot 2018 you'll love it, season 1 was prime television)

[muutos]

how does richard feel about those who do good? does he even care about them, or is he unbothered and merely coexisting? does he ever think about doing better or does he view what he currently does as permanent? not even necessarily re: moral standing, i suppose i'm curious on whether he experiences envy towards people who do good and thus receive good things in return etc.

richard by default these days sees everyone as below him. he considers himself to be ... i guess not enlightened, but definitely generally correct about most everything. till is the only one he'll place above himself, to be frank. so already, we're not onto a great start. he doesn't tend to care about anyone's opinions on default, other than generally wanting people to think he looks good, or rich, when he's out and about, or meeting people. nothing deeper than that, off the bat. he demands respect and people who don't give it to him, he either writes off, kills or beats.

however i'd like to note that while richard does believe in god, he believes more-less that god gains pleasure by watching people suffer, so he does indeed think do-gooders are absolutely naive, and automatically people who have a penchant to do good things for the sake it are misguided. he doesn't believe in it. his mother used to tell him he was going to hell, so he stopped being scared of it (mostly), a long time ago.

he definitely is indifferent to most. unless it's someone he has interest in (selfishly), or someone he deals with regularly. i remember he's had dynamics with other criminals who have 'codes', and he's always just been a smug asshole about it, trying to egg them on. he's super rude condescending in general to people who who do good, and it gets worse if you're a woman. unfortunately.

nowadays he definitely is comfortable in his skin, and he sees this as his permanent state of being. when he gets older he gets a little tamer, and chubbier (in the verses where he lives past 38)... but that's just the passage of time, generally. he's pretty full of himself, so he doesn't feel the need to get any 'better' -- although in a sense he does feel a bit burned that till finds him to be a hindrance, at times, due to his erratic behavior and sadomasochistic tendencies. in his secondary main verse he is quite guarded and thinks all of his brothers think he's useless. but that's just something he'd work to curb while he is working, and engage more-so in those things on his personal time. he also just thinks they're wrong for criticizing him.

although, when he was a teenager (homeless) -- and even when he first started living with the boys, he certainly did try. he recognized certain things about his empathy and lack thereof, and it frightened him. he definitely tried to be better, but till never helped that. eventually he started to simply grow into his traits. being praised for them having made him think that he was rather untouchable.

richard sees 'do good and you get good' as a pure coincidence. he does enormous amounts of bad and he's only ever been rewarded, other than losing his hand. but he accredits the loss as the thing that really transitioned him from being unsure in his new confidence, to cementing it. he prided himself on self-learning how to live with his non-dominant hand, and it really proved that power he held in his mind was real, and he could do anything he set his mind to. it was kind of his metamorphoses.

i feel more-less like richard's transition from the worst time in his life to the best time of his life just doesn't allow for him to believe in good karma. when he was trying to meet social expectations he was really in the worst position he ever had been, and it didn't get better until he unleashed the inner beast.

@katanher. ask me questions about my character.

[aikoiya]

One of the things about enlightenment is that you have to give up earthly attachments too. And Sky very obviously retains earthly attachments. So does Sun too in fact.

Not just earthly attachments either, but also desires. Because they also are very driven by their desires.

Enlightenment does not mean being a pure soul.

It's also very highly likely that Hyrule's world runs on reincarnation due to all the Buddhist iconography in the Ancient Cistern as well as the fact that the Satori is said to have reached enlightenment, thus having become a minor god of sorts.

There's quite a lot more to obtaining enlightenment than just being a good person.

I'd suggest looking at Avatar the Last Airbender. Specifically Guru Pathik's explanation of Chakrahs on Youtube.

Learning To Open The 7 Chakrahs

It's very simplified, but still accurate enough for the purposes of explaining how the Buddhist culture believes that one reaches enlightenment. Which, Skyward Sword has oodles of Buddhist messaging & iconography, which lends credence to the possibility.

As in, there is a massive ass statue of Buddha in the Ancient Cistern that acts as the center piece to the whole dungeon & there's lots of subtext through out the dungeon talking about refining yourself & your spirit, filtering out what the Japanese refer to as On'nen, but what the English refer to as malice. There's even a reference to the old Buddhist story of the Spider's Thread.

This one YouTube dude analyzes the dungeon very well.

What Is The Ancient Cistern?

In other words, I don't think Hylia intended for reincarnation to happen, but at the same time, I think that it's just the natural order of things & even she has no power over whether or not someone reincarnates. It's likely that the only one who does would be a deity who specifically rules over the reincarnation cycle such as Yama in Buddist belief.

I also agree with op that Hylia is most likely reincarnating. Part of the reason being that it makes sense thematically. After all, both Link & Ganon are reincarnating & the games have this overarching theme of trios.

I also think that it would make the sacrifice of her godhood mean more. If it were so easy to regain her godhood, then once she'd regained her memories, then why not just kill herself & become Hylia again?

Wouldn't being a literal goddess have made supplying the seal with power even easier?

If anything, her not being trapped in the reincarnation cycle & still choosing to remain mortal in such a moment would show that she's putting her own future happiness before a sure win.

Which itself would prove that she wouldn't be eligible for enlightenment on its own.

Rather, knowingly giving up her godhood for the sake of the people she loves, when she knows that she will become subject to the same reincarnation cycle as every mortal. Well, it just seems like something she'd do as a character.

My thoughts are that the only way to break the curse is for one of the trio to reach enlightenment & thus break free of the reincarnation cycle.

Because if there was no reincarnation cycle in the LoZ franchise the way that the Buddhist believe it, then why is Satori such a big deal that he's specifically noted to have basically become a Buddha?

At the end of the day, if reincarnation isn't the natural state of Hyrule's world, then the inclusion of Satori into BotW's world makes no sense. Of course, meta narrative is that the Satori was put in to honor the death of someone, but at the same time, why make the in-game lore be that he was a Buddha-like figure if that isn't how that world is intended to work?

I actually don't think that Demise's curse is causing Link & Zelda's souls to reincarnate. Because from what I understand, reincarnation is just something that happens until someone reaches enlightenment.

If so, then that means that Sky & Sun would've reincarnated regardless.

From what I understand, what the Bringer of Demise's curse actually did was make it so that whenever they do reincarnate, an incarnation of his hatred would be there to make their lives miserable.

Just basically him throwing a toddlerish tantrum & being a sore loser.

While that is true for the actual meaning of reincarnation, it's used differently I think in LOZ, the reincarnation cycle is shown as just that, a cycle, not a steady spiral journeying to enlightenment. And I hope that Hylia didn't intend to make the hero reincarnate after Sky because if the plan had gone without a hitch Demise would be defeated for good and his soul would be able to rest in peace.

There's no reason for him to keep reincarnating until he reaches enlightenment because the hero is a pure selfless soul of good. I mean Sky was able to use the Triforce in its entirety and went through the silent realm trials to grow his soul, you don't get much more spiritually balanced and, well, perfect than that. Also Zeldas don't reincarnate, Sun lived a human life and died, passing her power onto her children and so on down the timeline forming the royal bloodline. So I don't think it was Hylia's intention to keep reincarnating with the hero after Demise's defeat. And if so...that's kinda a dick move given Sky and Sun have no say in the matter; I don't think the chosen hero (First) even consented to the first reincarnation.

Which is why I prefer to think Demise threw the temper tantrum and whether intentionally or not messed with Hylia's spell to kickstart the cycle as we know. That way it's really no one's fault that events keep repeating themselves like we see in the games and everyone can be a victim to the magic of two flawed gods.

Thanks for the prompt anon, I'm going to do a little research into reincarnation now :)

[the-satellite]

Hello friends and welcome to ☆Hateful Nostalgia☆. I was exposed to the mob talker mod WAY too young bc I was an unsupervised child on the internet watching mod showcases and SkyDoesMinecraft. Looking back these sucked, the stories were often bland and the designs were milk toast at best and tits out at worst. So for the sake of procrastinating on working on anything substantial I grabbed the main 6 I remembered and gussied em up. Redesigns, rewrites, better names, all that bullshit. If your interested in better photos, design notes, story details and rambling hit the basement, otherwise here's a line up you should click for better quality.

Also I wrote all this once before already but I deleted it like a dumb bitch. On the night Unus Annus was murdered in front of my eyes no less. Was a rough fuckin night.

The Creeper- Kupa. An explosive pyromaniac with a habit of making empty threats and yelling. She protects what she believes to be her territory with a suicidal passion, but if you manage to get her to cool down and soften up she's pretty sick to hand out with. Hard of hearing, has at least one bout of head trauma at all times, and deathly allergic to cats.

Because the creeper is kinda the og I wanted to reference AT2's design more than the others, but I'm p sure the only thing I actually kept was the red hair and brown gloves. Otherwise I was doing whatever. I really wanted to lean into the explody bit of creepers, so I gave her some bite and dressed her in clothes referenced from Irish railroad workers. This may also be why I keep imaging her with a very heavy Irish or Scottish accent, whichever would be most incomprehensible when angry. Every color but her skin was color picked from one of the references, with some minor alterations for makes my eyes happy reasons.

With Kupa I imagine a story line with her would largely be about her as a character and her development than like an actual adventure narrative like everyone else. She starts off ready to blow up both you and herself in a misguided attempt to defend what she sees as her's and opens up and learns not everyone is out to get her. Lots of time taken to understand her childhood and how she ended up how she is. Very simple, probably the default or tutorial run people would go through.

The Zombie- Bee. The ill husk of a missing explorer suffering from a less than conventional appetite. She wallows in her self imposed loneliness, believing herself to be an irredeemable monster doomed to hurt those around her. What she really needs is a buddy and some clue to who she used to be. Rough voiced, chronically fatigued, and prone to spontaneous combustion in sunlight.

 I definitely consider this one the weakest for design sadly. I imagined Zombies as humans who went into strange caves and caverns and didn't come out for years, only to pop up as completely different people. I just tossed AT2's design. The first thing I did was make her a bit of a genderbent Steve and tinted her green bc Zombies in game are just Steve but green. Tore up her clothes, colored picked the darkest colors I could from the clothes on the in game and boom, Bee. I do vaguely regret not making her eyes pure black but I also still wanted her to be human enough to fit with the other overworld mods.

 Ok so Bee actually has a basic story. When you meet her she's aggressive, but as a warning. She fears the possibility she may hurt somebody so heads for threats immediately. Going back and forth between her cave and village for a while you learn more about the situation with the missing folks who come back and Bee as a person. After a bit you pick her up off her depressed ass and start a nocturnal adventure of refinding your past, adapting to who your becoming, overcoming self destuction, and slow burn babey!!! 

The Skeleton- Ulna. One of the few surviving warriors of a now destroyed kingdom and dead culture. She spends most of her time now traveling alone, hiding in trees and shooting anything see sees as a threat- which is everything- in the face with homemade arrows. Very much suffering from loss of her home and a bad case of lost purpose. A woman of few words, very antisocial, and naturally nocturnal.

 I came in with the Skeleton wanting to make her seem mysterious, so my first thought was immediately a cloak and a mask, but I wanted her face to like be visible so I went with the face paint. I didn't actually know that I wanted to do under there so I went with wraps that are reminiscent of the original outfit but still not tits out bc it's so fucking easy! Gave her a quiver, color picked the cloak and face paint from the in game model and the wraps from AT2'S art. I did like. Subconsciously draw her eyes the way I do Asian characters but I didn't have anything specific in mind so like go nuts with what you think she is.

 Ulna's deal is very much her lack of purpose or home and the entire thing is about finding that again. She's found sitting up in a tree during a storm pointing a bow and arrow into your face. She eventually let's you stick around until the storm is over and theres some bonding into deep night until the rain stops. You ask if she wants to come with on your little travelling sword for hire business, she says sure, sleep schedule shenanigans, backstory angst, and road trip bonding happens and she eventually decides that helping people is her new purpose and you're her new home

The Spider- Park. A young adult experiencing the world for the first time through her tribe's rite of passage. She's really just trying to figure out how to live life outside of the cave she's been stuck in her entire life and aggressively trying to be an independent adult despite not knowing anything about being an independent adult. Its projection. Blind in the daylight, naive and excitable, and taken to refusing help at her own risk.

 Ok so. I don't know who looked at the spider and said "purple haired loli with puffy pants" so I once again yeeted the whole thing, only really keeping the kinda cutesy and childish bits. Spiders are a tribe of humans what live in caves unless they've broken off to live on the surface. Kids are kept inside until they hit a certain milestone, where they come up to explore at night. They're usually small and pale, but are pretty kickass when necessary. Again picked the colors off the in game model, played with the lightest gray for the skin, and bc I couldn't figure out anyway to use the stripes so they're on the patches lol.

 Park's meeting is probably the funniest and most meet cute one here, in that she accidentally drops on top of you from a little cliff drop off. Cue loads of apologies and an explanation about the spider deal and being blind in light. She asks for some help getting around and bam babey friendship and emotional attachment! What follows is kinda a buddy of coming of age story with the obligatory goes home and is miserable scene. Generally it's just about being a scared young adult and having someone to fall back on and why that's important. Also crushes and young people being bad at that.

 The Blaze- Amber. A demonic entity who would let the world burn and the sun die if it meant she'd get her soul back. She's known for being ruthless, taking souls through force instead of making deals like other Blazes. Keeps this forceful nature even once she's become friendly, makes you do dump shit. Territorial, eyes glow and dim with her life, and runs remarkably warm.

 Amber here is the first one I actually did! I was just. Really tired that she was in a bikini. I decided early on I wanted overworld mobs to be human and everyone else was decidedly not, so Blazes are demons who gave up their souls under false pretenses to other Blazes. Because of how little clothes AT2's design wore I had essentially free reign and my thought was immediately to lean on golden knight bc of how Blazes are found protecting fortresses. The gold isn't picked from anything bc I was looser with the colors, but everything else is, and the hair is supposed to represent the smoke. Also the sticks in her hair are blaze rods bc I don't like them just floating around her.

Amber is found in the Nether obviously, protecting a fortress and immediately trying beat your ass and either incinerate you or make you give up your soul. During you prove yourself a p damn good fighter and she makes a deal to show you how Blazes exist and pursade you to give your soul up willingly. Bonding happens and she explains where the souls go and what happened to her. Insert line about how she dug in the sand for her soul until her fingers bleed bc I'm an Arcana freak lol. In general I'd just like her to learn to adapt to who she is now and learning to live life well instead of letting her anger burn her up from the inside out.

 The Enderman- Violet. A confused but sweet young bit of void created by and connected to the Ender Dragon. Her relationship with reality is tenuous at best and abusive at worst, making stable existence rather difficult. She doesn't know a name, age, gender, anything about herself aside from that she likes sweaters. Communicates primarily through psychic connections, docile and sweet, and melts like a witch in water.

 Violet was incredibly easy, so this may be way short. Endermen are decidedly human shaped void from the End with varying sentience. They're direct extensions of the Ender Dragon, and nobody knows how they're made or where they come from, not even they do. Adventurers who escaped The End say they seem scared of it though. Violet in particular is pretty damn new and extraordinary nonconforming, and I tried to show that with her sweater and ponytail. Once again, literally all colors picked. Definitely the simplest but one of my favs.

Violet is the sweetest meet up I think. As your traveling between villages you notice a strange enderman watching you and plant a little flower in front of her. She picks it and you hear a happy little trill come from you and a pretty voice say thank you in your head. Now you have a tall dark teleporting travel buddy! After a little bit of back and forth she tells you in some broken English that the Ender Dragon made her but she doesnt know how, and that it's bad and needs to be killed for the sake of Endermen and that's the new goal. Spoiler they're the corrupted souls of those that died fighting it, with it gone Endermen are free to exist as their own being and do whatever, hurray!

[theblognobodyfoundlastyear]

Who knew the "Principal Principle" was actually a thing?

I sure didn't until a few moments ago. They probably taught this at university, but I may (or may not) have fallen asleep during such a lesson. On another note, it's been crazy cold lately that sometimes I think my lungs are just barely functioning enough to keep me breathing. That or I've contracted something worse than Disco Fever.

On a more mundane note, I've some time in the coming days to goof around at a local arcade. No, not a euphemism for a gambling parlour or even a strip club. The real deal: Rigged claw machines, overpriced racing games and prizes that could be simply bought at the local toy store for the same or less price you paid to earn it at the arcade. But I imagine this kind of "hobby", if you can call it that, has the appeal of having put in effort to gain something. The thrill of the fight, if you will. And that's something that is not experienced when simply purchasing said prize, even though it is the more logical and financially effective option.

So, it's a lose-lose situation and we're knowingly waltzing into the danger zone like an absolute n00b. And in the end, we'll very much walk away with nothing - although I should preface that these funds are technically not out of my own pocket, so if anything, the only real thing I'd lose is time. But isn't time as valuable as people tell us? I suppose it's worthwhile reframing the value proposition in such a way that we don't emphasise the value of time for the sake of doing so, but rather emphasise the tasks that are done at the expense of time and assessing whether value was gained from such endeavours.

Then the situation becomes this: We are, depending on how you look at it, "wasting our time" doing these frivolous things where nothing was gained. In that sense, should a valuable hobby, if that even conceptually exists, always produce some kind of output such that it's now a transaction of time in exchange for an object of sorts? Perhaps if one is always thinking along those lines, they would miss out on a number of facets in life that, on the surface level, don't seem to provide too much value until they do. Things like meeting with *shudders* friends, supporting your peers and learning miscellaneous life skills. None of which provide any more benefit than lazing around at home and watching questionable televised content from your second favourite streaming service. But that's the crux: It's the principle of whether or not we care enough to do something about it.

Ultimately, the question evolves somewhat into: How does one care about something? Well, the precursor would be to consider why one should care about said something in the first place. Is it out of duty? Is it because there's a need that is not being met? Or a legitimate personal prompt to do it oneself? I think the motivation shapes the journey of caring a lot, and the outcomes of said journey. So one might end up caring about something for the wrong reasons, but the outputs are passable enough to be called positive outcomes. If you purely sought positive outcomes, you would have bulldozed the field and built your own baseball stadium. So in that case, it's the process of achievement that matters more so than the end result.

And so caring, in that sense, is not so much about an emotional attachment to said thing, although it is a good motivator. Rather, it's an investment that one day, after sinking hours and even years into this item of interest, it might be of some use to someone to help see the true light all because you were willing to pursue the venture.

'Til next time, young padawan.

After all things considered, you could even say that a simple penguin has a more likable personality than most people today. Thanks, children's shows from the 80's and 90's.