#rivers of steel

[newtownpentacle]

Artsy Fartsy at Carrie Furnace

Monday – photo by Mitch Waxman Finally, after getting soaked for a couple of hours at Pittsburgh’s Carrie Furnace, it stopped raining just after dusk. The other good news was that somebody is staging a play there, with lights and sound and the whole professional theatrical deal. The production had their stage lights on for the rehearsal, so I took advantage of some of the cast light they…

[katakaluptastrophy]

One thing that has me gnawing on the metaphorical drywall is that Abigail Pent apparently never learned just how awful Jod is.

There she is, in the River, murdered by one of god's fingers and gestures, having been invited to the First so that she could kill her husband and eat his soul and...she's triggering Harrow by exclaiming that "The King Over the River is good!" when she learns some people survived.

Having worked out that there is something fundamentally, practically, metaphysically wrong with the River she...just assumes poor old god doesn't know and could do with some Cliff Notes.

And then there's the battle with the Sleeper. She's hiding from a mad, gun-wielding ghost, her husband shot in the stomach on the other side of the room, and her carefully planned exorcism in pieces, and Ortus begins to recite the Noniad. And realising the impossible thing he wants her to do, Abigail - who pages earlier expressed her doubts about god's omnipotence, prays: “Oh, God... God, please help me” (which makes her the only character who isn't a literal priest or member of a religious order who we see praying).

When she describes her childhood bedroom to Harrow, everything she mentions sounds like something of significance to her: her grandfather's bones, her desk, the bed where her brother sometimes slept, and "a pretty chroma of the Prince Undying, but a little cockeyed." (think mass produced 1950s Sacred Heart picture and you're probably not far off...)

Despite having formative memories of having weird devotional art in her bedroom, Abigail is miles away from that other enjoyed of Jod pictures in their living space, Silas Octakiseron. She's open about her heterodox views, and clearly has the knowledge to back them up (including, it should be noted, at least one degree taken on the Eighth). And she clearly has form with going off on a heterodox tangent, as Magnus seems to have a well-rehearsed pattern for bringing her back to an acceptable line. And while she's happy to acknowledge that her views aren't orthodox, she's not being pointlessly controversial: she doesn't mind being a heretic, but she's rather upset by the idea that Marta might think her a mad one.

Marta, meanwhile, is one of several characters who show us that Abigail's intensity isn't just the result of living in a theocracy: “No. The Second House doesn’t overthink the River...If we did we’d just have to fill in forms.” Meanwhile, Ianthe is clearly thinking about dogma with an eye less to worship than replication.

And maybe it's because I know a lot of people who are devout but heterodox, and in relationships only tenuously accepted in their tradition (or only in their specific bit of the tradition)...but I just have a lot of feelings about Abigail here. Someone who's willing to be frank and informed about the complexities inherent in her belief system, but who seems to be committed to her faith. She seems so willing to think the best of Jod, to pray to him even when she's intellectually aware it may not be quite that straightforward and...he doesn't give a shit. He isn't god. He's a stupid little man who looks down on the humanities and I wish Abigail Pent got the chance to say something devastating to him.

[orofeaiel]

View from the High Steel Bridge | Mason County, WA

[idlenight]

this was a long time coming .

Oh the comedy and irony of Marshal Steel being on the breakroom fridge! Karma really does come for everyone.

Julia is honestly living her best life after years of Chen's dissaproving looks. Argent will never let Steel live this down (and also happy that this 100% makes people forget that she also kissed Sidestep). Herald probably regrets ever taking the hero drug rn.

And Chen? well he's just going to have to find more subtle places to kiss his villain boyfriend - the papparazi is truly everywhere.

meanwhile, at the Sidestep base:

(you're lucky River likes you so much Nehal or your ass would be fired)

close up of the article under the cut:

[9-93]

🏅2024 TEAM LEZHIN🏅

Team Lezhin 2024 Season Greetings! (x)

[downtherabbitholewithlucy]

If I had a dollar for every time somebody commented on Wes' 🍆...

[iristial]

So we got a happy Shouma with no trauma-laced flashbacks hitting us in the face with a steel hammer for once but at what cost.

[applestorms]

who do you think is smarter: l or light? without any sort of external help (supernatural forces, $$$)

L. ez. i actually already talked about this in my little ramble on intelligence in DN (in response to another ask) but to elaborate on those two in particular a bit more...

ok first of all, to reiterate: intelligence is a difficult thing to really Measure. not only could there be considered to be a lot of different areas/types of knowledge, but there's also a lot of different ways in which that understanding/informational backlog can be utilized or acted on. (plus the whole thing about how IQ tests only determine how good you are at doing IQ tests, etc. etc.)

that being said, i don't think we have to say that intelligence is entirely relative, or that there is absolutely no objective basis under which we can judge how smart someone is, particularly in the case of fictional characters. SO,

let's begin by setting up the parameter that "without external help," specifically refers to circumstances throughout the show itself, if only because it's a lot more complicated to try and figure out who light and L even are if they aren't connected to their canon backstories. this basically just means that they are beginning with whatever strengths/weaknesses they gained throughout childhood and their early teenage/adult years, like we're judging between who they were right at the start of the series pre-lind l. tailor and before they met.

of course, this means that immediately, L has an advantage over light purely by the fact that he is slightly older and has had more direct experience testing the limits of his knowledge through his detective work. while light has also seemed to receive a decently bougie education, he has not had a wealthy man looking over his shoulder to specifically give him everything he wants/needs to Develop His Mind-- he's top of his class, top of everyone in the country, but even that seems to not be particularly challenging to him. thus i don't think it's too out there to assume that light's logical reasoning/pure book & experience knowledge is somewhat stifled.

that being said, he does possess one distinct advantage over L, which is demonstrated quite extensively throughout the show-- his ability to manipulate and understand people. because L is catered to so specifically in such an isolated environment, he never quite gets the chance to have to Live Around People in the same way that light does, meaning that he is a lot less inclined to have the same kind of Instinctive Knowledge as light about how to mask his emotions or fit in with a group. also, the autism. his approach is kinda just to (white) lie a lot-- you could perhaps view this as L being able to understand other people and their motivations/emotions/etc. in the context of a kind of detective case/puzzle, but not quite knowing or realizing the importance of covering his own ass, in the way that light does. the closest he gets with this is when he pretends to be a misa fan right before yotsuba, but even then that's a pretty minor case and clearly planned to some degree beforehand.

thus: L's strengths are in his logical reasoning and ability to puzzle out all the pieces together, pay attention to minute details in evidence, and understand people in terms of base motivations and personality, particularly with regards to crime. his weaknesses are in his ability to understand people in the moment, particularly the ways in which his own actions/presence may influence them in minor ways outside of his few intentional moments of manipulation.

light's strengths are in his ability to respond in the moment (so long as his temper doesn't get to him first), to manipulate people and mask himself so thoroughly n so regularly that he can be under surveillance 24/7 and still manage to murder a few people in secret while keeping up the Sweet, Dedicated Boy Persona in the privacy of his own bedroom, and also his Pure Dedication when it comes to sticking with one plan (KIRA), especially when his own emotions/view of himself is at stake. his weakness is in his ego/reliance on people due to his need to be Seen as someone good and just, as well as his logical reasoning, which really isn't quite up to par with L.

i think people sometimes forget that in the case of both light and beyond, their ability to "reason out" the logic of these cases is specifically because they are the ones perpetrating them, and planning them out in advance. L trips light up time and time again because L is able to think through the evidence more cleanly and consider more potential paths than light, who is always biased towards his own reasoning/justification by nature of the fact that he was the one who came up with the damn plans in the first place.

throughout the series, again and again, light fails to account for the multitude of ways in which people catch on to him-- it's part of the reason why his getting naomi is such a significant moment, because it really was Pure Chance that he stumbled across her right at the time that he did. he simply didn't account for the possibility that raye may actually have close family and loved ones he would talk about his work with, much less someone intelligent enough to put the pieces together about KIRA, despite the fact that he specifically threatens raye about a loved on in the first place. idiot lmfao

in the case of the anime specifically, i'd also like to add that i think L is a bit more emotionally intelligence/mature than light, to some degree, or at the very least has more of handle on or acceptance of his own emotions (and fucked-up-ness). both are pretty childish and self-centered, yes, spoiled little brats in their own particular ways-- but, particularly as demonstrated in the rain scene, L seems to both know what he is and Accept the extent to which his morals are actually quite gray in a way that light just. can't. part of this may be due to L's lack of connection to other people, that he doesn't hold himself to their standards quite so highly, though part of it may also just be again that L is a bit older and therefore less in the throes of teenage Image angst or whatever.

additionally: if you would really like to even out the playing field, and consider 24 year old L versus 24 year old light... honestly i still think L wins LMFAO.

i've mentioned this before, but light post-time skip really isn't all that inventive with the Sick New Schemes he comes up with. honestly, a lot of what he ends up doing in the latter half of the series is exactly the same as his plots throughout the first half, just with slightly different pieces in place. he uses takada and mikami in place of misa in some cases while still refusing to get the eyes (even his father at one point), he switches the notebooks around a whole bunch to ensure he isn't caught due to the lifespan/DN owner thing, he fights a couple snarky geniuses whose names he Desperately wants to find out for a truly stupid amount of time... really, post-timeskip light comes across as very high-functioning depression to me in this half of the series, to some degree going on autopilot with the plans that he Knows will work because he's sunk cost fallacy too hard to give up on KIRA now, despite the fact that his heart really isn't into it as much by this point. kinda like L during yotsuba, though their reactions are quite different, with L going the opposite way to intentionally drop all his shit and give up to the annoyance of everyone around him cuz he's salty that his "intellectual partner" or serial killer boytoy or whatever has disappeared now.

so... yeah. i really do think L is just a bit smarter. light is certainly intelligent, yeah, he can keep up with L just fine throughout the series, but he also uses his intelligence in really fucking stupid ways sometimes (coughcough using his Stunning Reasoning to logic himself into a corner where he has to keep killing people to be a good person. make it make sense, yagami) and is much more heavily influenced by his emotions and Especially his temper and ego.

[weshallc]

I’m calling out your name as I’m walking along the river. I’m looking for the place where my soul dwells forever.

Cattle & Cane: Come Home

[arc-hus]

Melopee School, Ghent - Xaveer de Geyter

https://xdga.be/

[newtownpentacle]

Soggy socks at Carrie Furnace

Friday – photo by Mitch Waxman Bands of thunderstorm were blowing through, and it was occasionally raining furiously, at the Carrie Furnace. You do the best you can with the circumstance when you’re behind a camera, so I did. I intended on using every minute I was there productively, so a solid three hours of focus occurred. A humble narrator has attended enough of these sorts of photographer…

[fernweh-arcane]

No edits

4/28/2023

[tibialtybalt]

oh no i wasnt expecting plot i cant be losing it over two podcasts at once

[serenadelotus]

くそっ damn... men

[idlenight]

y'all know that one spiderman and deadpool panel? Yeah, that's Chen and River's post-reveal dynamic. Sidestep has become 20x more insuferable.

[theriu]

My pop had to put eclipse glasses on Molten Steel during our eclipse party XD