#undertagged

[canonical-transformation]

"Just as I promised, the winners of this contest may each ask me one question," says Lady Ningguang. "Beidou, Traveller, and Paimon have abstained, so that leaves the three of you."

Yun Jin asks her question first. It's a thinly veiled business proposition, a Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could work together?. It's not the sleaziest dealing you've seen, but eugh, self-serving grownups and their money money money, me me me. Typical.

(Ningguang invites her to perform at the Jade Chamber.)

Shenhe asks her question next, and it's really dumb, like, what should I do with my life?, where do I call home?. Props to her, though: normally when people her age ask those kinds of questions, they're sobbing into an empty margarita glass. Weird mountain lady looks way more dignified.

(Ningguang gives her the answer you would have given, but she makes it sound way more sophisticated. She's good at that, apparently.)

Then Lady Ningguang turns her gaze to you. "And you?" she asks. "What is your question?"

You cross your arms. "You already know what I'm gonna ask," you say.

"Perhaps I do," she says. "I'd like to hear you say it anyway."

Her face gives nothing away. She doesn't look like she's laughing at you. She looks like she might take you seriously. You've been wrong about that before, but it's a good sign at least.

Fine. You can do that.

"You'd better not laugh," you warn her.

"I promise," she assures you.

You nod, stand up extra straight, and ask:

"How do I completely, totally, one hundred percent destroy Mondstadt's wine industry?"

[adjoint-law]

I think that to say unconditionally that a loving attitude (as in "I love my wife/grandkids/BFF") is de re is to situate this notion of "love" in an arena where intension is meaningful. To do this while maintaining physicalism is to either interpret love-claims as epistemic claims ("I believe I love [referent]") or, perhaps more sensibly, to interpret love-claims as claims about ontological properties/relations. (But not directly claims about particulars / "atoms" / "things", insofar as those do not have intension.) In either case, the claims are syntactic enough to be vulnerable to Gettier problems when we start throwing facsimile based teleporters into the mix.

I do think that once we are dealing with such scenarios, the reductionist-behaviourist account of love is more descriptive. I act in a certain way around people who I am strongly convinced are my [wife, grandkids, bestie]; this is true even in the counterfactual(?) world where they are secretly replaced with cell-for-cell memory-for-memory copies whenever my back is turned. When the teleporter malfunctions and now there are two of my loved ones, I will be extremely messed up about it, but the fact of my love (in the sense I use the word) is not contingent upon whether one, both, or neither of them are "the original".

Of course, I'm a proverbial "Platonist on weekdays"— in practice I treat love as de re, and use "continued physical consciousness modulo ship of Theseus concerns" as my notion of identity for normative claims and filing my taxes and decision-making and epistemic reasoning. Much of that is contingent on not having grown up in a society where facsimile based teleporters and cell-for-cell memory-for-memory copiers exist — i.e. I exist in a linguistic community where these several notions of identity are already conflated.

[adjoint-law]

Watch time go round like a merry-go-round. Going so fast like a merry-go-round

Time really is a flat circle.

[mickedy]

i keep smiling at this image i love this sprite of sans so much 🌈❤️🩵 please... remember you're shopping bags

[canonical-transformation]

genshin tier list (keeping the peace)

[emanation-aura]

I am not a mathematician. I took the lowest possible level of maths in school (exams were all calculator permitted, meaning we didn’t have to do too much thinking ourselves).

However, I have recently been educated by my brother on a “chain rule”. There is a document attesting to his attempts to teach me. I cannot read it. It is still black magic.

What is he trying to explain?

(If you actually know maths please help me. If you do not, wrong answers only.)

[adjoint-law]

(TL;DR: capitalism; scarcity theories of art; automation; the futility of trying to TLDR a conversation about art and automation and capitalism and derivative works and—)

[toastystroodly]

digital idols

[mickedy]

want to believe that sans is as easy to blush as papyrus. probably out of character and to this i say. idc its cute

[canonical-transformation]

@three-o-clock-things @withoutrunes

tinkaton’s smithy

[canonical-transformation]

The people of Teyvat like the Traveller and Paimon, by and large. Those two have done so much for them: battling ancient gods, overthrowing corrupt governments, healing angry dragons, and so on.

But quite a lot of people would appreciate it if the Traveller and Paimon stopped winning so many things.

There was that time they won the Crux Clash. And the Tianquan's Plaustrite finding contest. And they found all the Adventurers Guild's adventure chests during Moonchase. And they won all the top prizes at Windblume the other year.

And—not that Hyakunin Ikki is more than an urban legend—but if it was real, which it's not, because that would be illegal... well, the Traveller is the three-time winner. The Shuumatsuban think Taroumaru might have lost a duel to the Traveller, but nobody's sure.

Just last month they won the Nilotpala Cup. It's a fungus fighting event. Are they just good at everything?

It's kinda unfun competing against them.

Oh and rumour has it that this Weinlesefest, the Traveller and Paimon found every godsdamned Fecund Hamper in Mondstadt in the space of one evening.

Anyway, nobody is happy to hear that they're involved in the Test of Courage.

[alleyskywalker]

Some of Louis’ choices in the finale do make me raise my eyebrows a little bit at him. He's got all the right to be pissed at Armand, no question. But why does this automatically redeem Lestat in his eyes? OK, sure, Lestat saves him - that's new information to him, but...First, this doesn't change anything about Lestat's part in Claudia's death (which is what he primarily confronted him about in the tower) nor the fact that Lestat willingly participated in the trial. Nor does it change the fact that Armand saved him from being starved to death. Technically, they both saved Louis, but at different points and in different ways. (If Armand really wanted him dead, he could have just left him in the wall or could have warned the coven about Louis’ plan to destroy/attack them, etc. And even though he lied about the proportion of his role, Armand had already admitted to knowing that the coven was planning to kill Louis and Claudia. And…Louis makes the choice to warn Armand to not be at the theater before he gets the “full” story of how much Armand knew/participated. At that point, all Louis “knew” was that Armand had saved him, which…wasn’t even technically a lie in and of itself, just, again the degree of things.)

So, what really changes re: Armand and Lestat in the final reveal? For Armand: he participated in the trial more actively and in saving Louis less than originally supposed. For Lestat: he participated in saving Louis, whereas initially Louis thought he hadn’t. So ultimately…both Armand and Lestat actively participate in the trial and then both participate in saving Louis. (Granted, Armand lies more in the process. But on the other hand – Armand can’t really be expected to care about Claudia and Lestat can; Armand had attachments and commitments to the coven and Lestat didn’t…) If Louis had just walked away from Armand as well, that’s fair enough. But how does Lestat suddenly warrant a reconciliation (and apology??) when a similar level of participation in this whole debacle warrants Armand – Louis’ partner for decades, whom he had supposedly forgiven for the worst of what happened in Paris, who has stuck with him through various self-destructive behavior trying to fix what he'd broken – an immediate break up (with some physical violence to boot) with no questions asked? (And he has to be at least somewhat over it if he hasn’t bothered to hunt down Sam despite them knowing all about where he is and what he’s up to these days.)

Speaking of questions for Louis, here’s one. So, Armand claims that the coven “improvised” a death sentence from the word banishment. He says this in the context of claiming that he saved Louis by mind controlling the crowd into sentencing Louis to banishment instead of death. But what if…it’s not true that the coven “improvised”? Perhaps “banishment” has a double meaning or gets used as a euphemism for those sentenced to die of starvation in the wall or just who get buried in those crypts after committing crimes. I’m not saying, btw, that this is indeed so, but we don’t actually have evidence that it isn’t. Satiago getting flustered at first indicates that this isn’t a formal way to refer to this kind of punishment/sentencing at least, but when he tells the coven to “tuck him in nice and tight” everyone know exactly what he means, so there’s a basis to assume  the possibility of some common understanding of banishment = getting shoved into the wall, alive or not, whether slang, euphemism or similar. So, let’s for a second assume this is true.

Armand wouldn’t admit this context to Louis while he’s lying about saving him at the trial, because it takes away from Armand’s role as his savior, so if he’s going to lie about mind controlling the crowd, he has to lie/bend the truth about how much the coven needed to improvise to arrange for a death sentence regardless. It also makes sense then that Armand might not have taken this road to trying to save Louis, in fear/knowledge that it would/could just come out worse.

So, what of Lestat? Lestat knows the rules, conventions, and language customs around the coven because, well, he founded/was part of it. So if “banishment” could be easily interpreted as “banishment to starve in the wall,” then Lestat would know that or could be expected to. Yet, this is the punishment he chose when he could have mind controlled the crowd into saying anything. Hell, why didn’t he mind control them into saying “not guilty?” Would have solved a lot of issues, yk?  Would this make Lestat kinda extra vengeful/sadistic? Sure, but…he did just willingly participate as the star witness in a trial to burn Louis and their “daughter” to death. Is this really sooo out of character from what Louis knows or thinks he knows about Lestat at that point in time? Like, not even to question Daniel’s suggestion that Lestat saved him – even though, the script is not actually evidence of that, just that Armand might have had a more extensive role in the play? (And…he could have still been under duress to direct it as much as he would have been to just not tell Louis about it. But Louis doesn’t ask about/consider this either.)

I’m not saying that’s how it went, mind. The reunion scene with Lestat makes it pretty clear that Lestat had in fact wanted to save Louis. But Louis can’t/doesn’t know this, certainly not prior to the reunion scene. Did Lestat actually save him? Is there any other context he might be missing? This is just a theory Daniel has after all. Does Claudia’s death no longer matter then? Doesn’t this just mean that both Lestat and Armand belatedly tried to save him? He’s obviously shocked and not thinking straight – I’m not saying this to bash him or anything (and leaving Armand would have been a justified reaction regardless, just for the lying). But it’s kinda crazy to me that Louis is apparently so eager to believe the worst of Armand and find any reason possible to forgive Lestat at the drop of a hat.  

I don’t really have a point here. Just…need to throw thoughts into the void because the show melted my brain a bit. Forgive me, etc. I do love/enjoy all these characters.

[c-rberus]

> boss battle!

tàirneanach, follower of the aurora, has initiated a fight with you 🐺💥

[malwarechips]

you know how sometimes when youre anxious you get that knot in your stomach? do you think that, post-canon, siffrin ever gets that and completely panics because it feels so similar to the tugging on their stomach whenever they looped. do you think . do you th

[toastystroodly]

mettaton is caseoh core

[mickedy]

This doesn’t seem right