#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 😔

[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

[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.)

[me-beef]

@strangeravatar made a great point

i was gonna focus on the spike-hotboxing-celestia aspect but i got distracted somewhere along the way and i think i forgot what joke i was trying to make

but dont you think its interesting how many guards of the exact same color/body type she's managed to accrue?? i do

ooohh you want to go look at our stickers so bad

[not-souleaterpost]

Lord Dunsany and the broken telephone of "fantasy"

So for my weekly post that nobody will care for, I'll again squeeze out some shit related to a topic I researched for the iceberg, but that doesnt really have anything to do with Soul Eater:

Lord Dunsany is often quted in some "deeplore" "well akshually" stuff to be the father of "modern fantasy", but did all the people who read him miss the point?

So I'll start by saying I wasnt ever into fantasy, it allways seemed kinda corny, only stuff I cared was LoTR cause I kinda grew up and around people were obssesed with it and DQ, cause of the DBZ bleed over and because I just like the slimes lol.

That may makes me disqualified about commenting, but eh, I dunno, I think my point will still stand, cause I will bring it back to Tolkien now:

Some people say he was inspired by Dunsanys "word building" to make his own overly convoluted mythology, but here lies my objection:

The two books I read of Dunsany about "the gods of Pegana" seem not really care about the "lore"

They seem to be written in the style as if they were some holy book, yet the names seem deliberately random and often the storys are either contradictory or mix up the details to make a point and to reflect that feeling of myths that arent organized by some obsessive nerd wiki for logical consistency.

Because in the end the books arent about "fantasy" (atleast the ones I have read), but as kinda didactic laments about the authors perceived nihilism and meaninglessnes/cruelty of the world.

Ok that may be reductive, cause there are many vivid and even beautiful or fascinating things described, but in the end you feel that tone of "Oh that is like fanfiction from the Bible book about how everythings is just meaningles vapor" tone.

Like in "the gods and time" there is a great short story about a prophet who sees the "true gods" and abondons the old ones for them with his followers, only to repeatedly then see even greater gods, only to lose more and more of his acolytes with each subsequent trip and in the end arive back at the old gods he rejected at the star - basically a commentary at the foly for the strive of knowledge or about how things are more simple at the end of it all than one trys to think.

But the important thing is that the "gods" of this short story dont really matter more than for the point they make in it - I would be surprised that for example the "mocking gods" have some specific lore, events and super powers etc like shit in Tolkiens stuff has, or in modern generic fantasy, where everyone is some world or warcraft charachter shooting magical auras.

Still, maybe Im ignorant, and in all the other storys there actually is that feeling of a shared mythology and "wordbuilding" besides the tone of "life's a bitch and then you die"

Anyways, what was the point of this all? I guess to say that it is kinda sad that an innovatitive form of literature gets reduced into the current state of "top ten word building tips!" videos on youtube.

Ok maybe thats to harsh, even I know how fun it is to come up with a setting and its own intrincitys, but still, I think one shouldnt limit oneself to that - its like watching DBZ for the power levels - when the point is that they dont matter.

But in the end, maybe this post just shows my own ignorance - maybe most fantasy does that already. Yet when I allways hear everybody praise some Brandon Sanderson guy, who seems to only care about "magic systems being consistent" and literally color codes his creatures to match emotions or some shit idk😂

And also, I wonder if Tolkien had actually finished more books if he hadnt noodled around with his silly lore matching, especially when it in the end still is contradictory😂🤷‍♂️

Anyways, sorry this kinda sounds more spitful than I wanted, guess its cause I saw some video where they talked about these books as if they were all about just creating some wacky fantasy world, which seemed strange to me after having read even just a small part of his whole work.

So: Yeah...Sorry

[trabpu-kcip]

2024 in numerology is an 8 year. Number 8 is ruled by Saturn. It relates to things like hard work, delays, restrictions, depression. But with hard work, you also get rewarded at the end. So I'm expecting this year we may have to work hard - but, there will be rewards in the end. 2015 and 2006 were also 8 years (the digits add up to 8), so think back to those years, there will be a similar vibe this year.

[thestarfishface]

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

[stealingpotatoes]

i'll never get over Leia naming her son Ben like imagine naming a child after your absentee uncle's fake ID

[artkaninchenbau]

People keep on asking for more Baby Robin and Papadile so here is more Baby Robin and Papadile. Now never ask anything from me ever again

[sapsolace]

obsessed w these boneheads as of late :]

[themightiestacorn]

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