#talking out my ass

[noizybreadstick]

Welcome to my pseudo intellectual ramble.

I love how Ship of Theseus Boothill is and how it has made me think a bit more about it. I haven’t finished the story of Penacony yet but I’m just gonna ramble from what I know from his backstory and what else I’ve seen.

Below are spoilers about Boothill’s backstory. Bless you if you’ve managed to avoid them so far. Can’t be me, that shit was everywhere.

Boothill from neck down is robot which got me thinking about the thought experiment of the Ship of Theseus.

For those who don’t know about the thought experiment allow me to explain; say a museum has found Theseus’ ship. Then the ships parts slowly start to rot and every piece has to be replaced until there are no longer any original parts of the ship. Then the question is posed; is it the same ship?

You can see where I’m heading with this. I have seen this question also posed the same way when it comes to science fiction and replacing body parts. I have also discussed this topic with my friends. I have my stance and answer to this question but when it relates to Boothill allow me to elaborate.

Now, how this relates to Boothill. Boothill, neck down, is all robot from what we’ve seen. Even his voice has a very slight robotic sound and he has vocal synthesisers that can be tampered with so, dare I say, from chin down he’s robotic, even his eyes are cybernetic. When it comes to his body he sure as hell went full force replacing every plank of wood.

My answer to this thought experiment is; as long as it still has the spirit and meaning of the ship I think it still is Theseus’ ship. With Boothill though, it’s a bit more of a complex answer.

Boothill’s mentality is no longer of the happy go lucky boy running around on the farm, daughter in his arms, and song on his lips. Theseus’ ship was nuked and wants revenge. Boothill is no longer who he was and is steadfast in ripping up the planks. It is not a gradual decline of rot but an active tearing up and destroying.

Is Boothill the same man despite his cybernetic enhancements? My answer: No, no he’s not. And he probably never will be. There is no rebuilding this ship.

[finchers-ipad]

Fight Club ‘Drop Dead Fred’ AU where the narrator still begins to hallucinate Tyler but either Marla or his father become aware of it sooner and take him for a psychological analysis where they give him the pills (that they give Elizabeth in the movie) so that Tyler slowly starts to become weaker and tells the narrator to stop taking them.

Telling him that he needs him and he’s really hurting himself and giving up on trying to hit bottom. The narrator keeps taking the pills, trying to ignore him, until Tyler is a shell of his former self. When he takes the last pill, he is stood over Tyler and Tyler finally drops his excuses and tells the narrator that he loves him and doesn’t want to leave him. They need each other.

Against his better judgement and feeling guilt ridden about all of the lives that he and Tyler have affected with Project Mayhem (especially Marla), he takes the pill and watches Tyler fade away. Dropping to his knees and realising what he has just done, he begins to sob, feeling like a part of him has died

[blondedbitch]

teslas look like something that’s not a car trying to be a car

[gracieart]

I have the urge to draw Sartaq now. If only to contribute to the 3 fanarts there are of him currently 😔

[hayhayitsj]

is it weird to be Miss Rainbow Sunshine Rainbows and yet still be the most bitchy, negative, morbid fucking person on the damn planet

Update: Today I wrote a paragraph in history about 11 people dying in sweden while wearing neon orange and pink sweatpants

[themightiestacorn]

only two things are getting me through my depression

1. yaoi

2. jacking off to said yaoi

[ubersaur]

thinking abt the concept of opening sequences before a TV show starts. kinda neat. I wonder if the practice started in theaters where the orchestras would play an overture before a play began? Kind of a call to the audience to get to their seats. I remember being wee and my siblings and I would always zoom around while the Enterprise flew by during the TNG opening sequences and then we'd settle in to watch the episode. Shows are barely on TV these days and you can start them whenever you please but we still have these lil opening sequences. neato

[steal-this-idea]

Finally got around to watching the second season of Yellowjackets. I'm still processing it but I do hope in the end there's not really a supernatural element to it: there doesn't have to be for the story to end satisfyingly.

Shauna's line seems like the throw-away of the very next victim of a standard supernatural horror film (the Darkness being them; that it's inside them because they're fucked up people who did fucked up things) but it'd be nice, I think, for that to be the overall truth and the seeming supernatural stuff actually having mundane explanations that wouldn't be seen (or knowable) to kids still in high school strung out on starvation. It's like how religion started (probably): a series of coincidences that proved useful to survival getting meaning imparted upon them

I would love for the "symbol" to just be some mundane cave marker or whatever that the girls gave a higher meaning to. Weird shit happens all the time, but that doesn't mean it has to be supernatural in origin.

These girls all have horrifying levels of PTSD (and mental illness apparently). If people can return from war all fucked up from their experiences, why can't the (why did no real town in New Jersey volunteer to be associated with this show) Wiyasocki Yellowjackets girls' soccer team also be that.

I don't know. It would just feel like a cop-out to make it have actual supernatural elements instead of just implied ones which, under more rational circumstances, would naturally be interpreted more mundanely

I think of Tolkien complaining in one of his letters about a BBC broadcast mischaracterizing his work, referring to Willowman as an ally of Mordor. His exact quote being, "Cannot people imagine things hostile to men and hobbits who prey on them without being in league with the Devil!"

Alright, I'm done talking out my ass now

[steal-this-idea]

I've also thought that, if we accept for the sake of argument, that a pure genome of a dinosaur could be found, that cloning it back into existence would condemn it to almost immediate death because its immune system would be at least 65 million years out of date

My favorite detail about Jurassic Park is that it has a baked-in justification for any and all retcons it might need to make due to paleontology advancing forwards.

Because there is not a single dinosaur that has ever appeared in Jurassic Park.

Not one. Not in the books. Not in the movies. Not ever.

"Now what John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park was to create genetically engineered theme park monsters." ~Alan Grant

Grant says that in a moment of cynicism. It's part of his arc for the film. But it's not inaccurate. What Jurassic Park has, what it's always had since the very first novel, are "Mostly Dinosaurs".

"And since the DNA is so old, it's full of holes! Now, that's where our geneticists take over!" ~Mr. DNA

It's impossible to recover a fully intact gene sequence from an ancient amber mosquito. Cloning a pure dinosaur would have been completely impossible, and so the park filled in the gene sequence with whatever works. Frog. Lizard. Bird. Whatever they need to get the result they are trying to get.

Every single dinosaur is a chimeric beast made up of mostly dinosaur and a bunch of other stuff that some scientists thought would achieve the appropriate dinosaur-like result.

"Nothing in Jurassic World is natural! We have always filled gaps in the genome with the DNA of other animals. And if the genetic code was pure, many of them would look quite different." ~Dr. Henry Wu

Which, from a writing perspective, is fucking genius. Because now you have a preset excuse for each and every plot hole your movie has.

Like. Why don't the raptors have feathers? Because of the chimera DNA.

Why do dilophosaurs spit venom? Because of the chimera DNA.

Why do T-Rexes have movement based vision? Oh, they don't. But Rexy does. Because of her chimera DNA.

Why is the Spinosaurus so fucking big? Because of the chimera DNA.

Why are the velociraptors mislabeled? Because Hammond's a dipshit.

Like. I've always marveled at the way Jurassic Park started out by giving itself a blanket excuse to be wrong about every single thing it ever said about the central attraction of its franchise. It's honestly beautiful, and allows the series a degree of immortality well into the era where we know better about its animals.

[zeezeepearl]

ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don't think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it's the thinking millennial's astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.

I don't think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR's bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn't to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn't give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.

She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don't know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!

This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you're above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.

No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don't have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.

[cursedwithgloriouspurpose]

I think there's a point at which we do need to recognize that some calls for "diversity" are being made in bad faith. Not all, by any means, but this kinda thing tends to happen most often with media that's already aimed at progressive, inclusive audiences, and/or (though usually 'and') by creators who are themselves members of one or more marginalized communities. This isn't a new observation, of course, but this type of media tends to get more scrutiny by its audience as a default, and thus more push back for any genuine or perceived "mistakes" (even when said 'mistakes' are actually just a non-majority opinion from inside the group... though that's a slightly different topic.)

Take, for example, what inspired this rant: Ruffles brought to my attention that CritRol is still getting heavy amounts of criticism, to this day, for their "lack of diversity," despite the entire production putting in tons of effort to address the genuine issues they had in the past. It is literally a queer game made by and for queer people which, yes, has a majority white cast but has taken efforts to diversify their rotating cast members and bring on board creators of varying backgrounds to their other shows.

But they're not "diverse" enough, still. And after looking at a lot of this criticism, the only thing I can conclude is that most of the people who are still screaming about this are just screaming to scream. After all, the only other thing that could possibly be done at this point is to either replace the core cast entirely, or to cancel the show outright.

Which just... isn't something that could be suggested in good faith, right?

(And to be clear, I have not actually seen anyone call for this to happen, this is just me logic-ing out what the next step would have to be given the steps that have already been taking.)

[musubiki]

balor 🥰

[thestarfishface]

“There is no platonic explanation for thi-“ Sprays u with water. Sprays u

[themightiestacorn]

sometimes i block people just so they can't block me first

[octylish]

Chasing You

[steal-this-idea]

Listening to opinions regarding the immunity decision by SCOTUS, I found myself flashed back to a conversation I had in college (back in the '90s) after reading predictions about when whites would become a plurality in this country rather than the majority

I wondered aloud whether we would discover if people believed the United States (and what it represents) was an idea or if the United States was white (i.e. for white people; to be ruled (only) by white people)

While I have always been taught that America was an idea and its people without ethnic/racial heritage (basically put, you're an American because you live here and because you believe it). I recall a story my father once related to me about a man of Russian descent now living in the United States permanently. He told my father the thing he loved most about the United States was how nobody questions that he's an American. He said if he had chosen to live in France, he would always be seen as a Russian living in France and never French but that here in America, I am not a Russian living in America, I am American.

I know I'm not putting it elegantly but that's what America is to me: an idea and we citizens are its stewards

The Republican party clearly does not see America that way and I worry when (please vote against the GOP, don't make this an "if") they lose, instead of introspecting and opening their hearts to an inclusive conservative vision, they will instead double down (again) on whiteness and their perverted vision of Christianity and resort to terrorism to take by force and fear what could not be taken from the ballot

And it pisses me off, realizing this as late I had, to find out conservatives - now almost entirely represented by the Republican party instead of split between the two (remember when conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans existed alongside the current polarization?) throughout our history only supported the Constitution when it (and state laws) enabled them (the Southern dominance of the antebellum period brought about by the 3/5ths Compromise leading to threats of civil war during the nullification crisis when they weren't getting their way and the actual civil war when an abolitionist won the Presidency; the effective overturning of the 14th Amendment when Congress allowed former traitors to return to governance less than a decade after the Civil War had ended (!) which would prematurely end Reconstruction and enable the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan that followed to bring out the Jim Crow era which would go largely unanswered for a century; the modern bullshit to mask their racism, that their religious freedom and freedom of speech were being curtailed as segregation and other bigotries became outlawed leading to decades of conservative propaganda to undermine faith in public institutions & expertise, packing it with othering and encouraging the cruelties toward those outgroups it implies and ideological court packing to bring us to where we are today)

I can only hope the demography of this country has changed enough that, not only will they lose this election (and lose big ...though I suspect it will be embarrassing close) but that this second attempted coup will be the last as they will never again have the numbers to pull it off

My fantasy for the time being is that enough people have moved to Texas since 2020 to have the state go to the Democratic Party henceforth thus rendering all these "battleground states" moot for a generation.