#when it’s actually kinda revisionist

[chickenhuggit]

from how the goncharov fandom talks anout her youd really expect katya to appear in more than three scenes

[tanadrin]

Ok this might be a strange ask, but. do you have any opinions on the marxist/leninist/whatever idea that, western capitalist states supply a welfare state and higher wages (and so on) for western workers through imperialism, in order to subdue class struggle in western states, so that the western proletariat basically has a hand in imperialism (that anti-imperialism in practice would materially harm the western proletariat)

i think that's wrong. i think it sounds like a way you can rationalize political disengagement in a both-sidesist kinda way and also accelerationism if you're into that; i think that kind of nebulously conspiratorial belief is also a way to sort of rationalize the red-brown alliance, the need to punish the bad sheep people who don't agree with you, and a way to discount anybody who uses actual substantive policy achievements as a way to point out that actually, yes, engaging with politics can produce positive outcomes.

it is factually incorrect, of course. there's no causal connection between the welfare state and capitalist imperialism. capitalist imperialism in the form that hardcore marxists are thinking of is kind of an anachronism anyway. much like "liberalism," they're using a lens of analysis which basically thinks history ended in 1917, that the systems and politics of the long 19th century have continued forever, and we have to sort everything into categories that are a century old even though the world has changed radically since then.

it is also, annoyingly, a rejection of the wins of leftism. leftism has done a lot of good in the world! i think leftism is directionally correct. many of the things we take for granted now in many wealthy countries--the 40-hour workweek, legal protection for unions and labor organizing, universal healthcare (outside the US of course), the existence of welfare programs in various forms, employee protections (weak in the US except for Montana; strong in many other countries), and, you know, the decolonization of most of the planet--these are all things leftists of various stripes fought and died for, and for good reason!

the reason "leftism" is weak--and of course by "leftism" people taking this position usually only mean their own particular flavor of revolutionary leftism, with everybody else being a scumbag liberal or a revisionist or a trotskyist sabateur or w/e--is because leftism keeps winning when it allies with aligned interests in an electoral context. that is to say, pragmatic progressive politics is historically quite effective (the thing Americans have historically called "liberalism" but which in international political language is closer to "social democracy," and is not Reaganism/Thatcherism), is quite willing to ally with people who share its goals including less self-defeating leftists, and continues to make new gains. see this page. there is no telos to history of course, and it's a constant struggle. but the revolution-only remnant needs to come up with a narrative to rationalize being left out in the cold, because without that rationalization their whole approach starts to come under indictment. so it can't be that their politics is ineffective--it's the sheeple bribed into shutting up by welfare!

[psychotrenny]

Liberals say a lot of dumb shit, but if you're going to bother critiquing it then you need to understand what they're trying to say in the first place. Like "Late Stage Capitalism" isn't an especially useful or coherent term, but you can't dismiss it with "just say Imperialism" because that is very obviously not what people are talking about when they use it. Even just by contemporary usage, you should notice how it's nearly always employed by people complaining about declining quality of life (i.e. cuts to social safety nets, reduced domestic regulations, growing mismatch between costs of living and wages) within the Imperial Core. You never hear left liberals use it to discuss even the most obviously evil manifestations of Imperialism (i.e. coups and election subversion, "unjust" invasions, dropping napalm on children etc.) that even they are willing to criticise sometimes. In the contemporary discourse, it's functionally just a way to critique Neoliberalism by comparing it to Social Democracy- both are still equally Imperialist systems. Like "The Highest Stage of Capitalism" is consistently used by ML to mean imperialism, while "Late Stage Capitalism" is mostly used by Liberals to complain about getting an insufficient share of the loot.

There's also a need to consider that the idea of "Late Stage Capitalism" wasn't even popularised by left liberals; they merely adopted it and became its most enthusiastic users/abusers. The original use of the term "Late Capitalism" was in the early 20th century by reactionary (but Marxist influenced) German sociologist Werner Sombart to describe the state of capitalism in his time. However, by the 1960s it was most popular among members of the Frankfurt school of Marxism when discussing the features of the Post WW2 era. Its first popular use in English was in the 1975 translation of the thesis Late Capitalism by Belgian Trotskyist Ernest Mandel, but the person who popularised it the most was probably USamerican Marxist Frederic Jameson. He used it in his 1991 essay "Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, which effectively engaged in the sort of "society has become soooo superficial and consumerist" critique that liberals are happy to eat up. This implanted the phrase firmly in the heads of Anglophone Imperial-Core Left Liberals and adjacent revisionists, and by the 2010s as more and more people were drawn into that whole milieu ("became radicalised" as they like to put it) the phrase spread and spread and now you see it everywhere in any vaguely "leftist" space.

Now this whole summary isn't an attempt to defend the phrase by discussing its pedigree; I don't think it was ever a very good or useful phrase and that developments in global capitalism can be discussed without declaring the dawn of a new epoch based on a disconnected jumble of often superficial changes. My point is that the phrase has a whole history of its own; it's not something that got thoughtlessly made up one day and any meaningful critique of the phrase has to consider this. You need to meet people where they are at, based on what they're actually saying and not what it roughly sounds like they're saying. When you treat "Late Stage Capitalism" as just the Liberal version of "Highest Stage of Capitalism" because the two phrases sound kinda similar, it's criticism of the most superficial and idealist type. In your attempt to "pwn the liberals", you've ended up talking like one

[f0point5]

I still think it's very shitty of rbr/vcarb that they let Danny be hounded by all the media and not be able to confirm or deny anything. Especially if he himself actually knew it was gonna be his last race, and had to say he didn't know. It's just all around a shit show.

And then hiding behind the "he didn't perform" excuse when vcarb routinely fucked up his strategies week in and week out. And when they let Checo lose the constructor's for them with poor performance. I understand the money aspect but does he bring more to the table that it's worth it for them to be second or even third in the standings? But I digress.

Daniel helped develop the car (according to the team) more in a year than Yuki did in his 3? And he's right behind him in the standings. So he was an essential help in getting the team forward.

Yeah I might be biased as a fan of his, but you can't objectively say he's washed and shit when the team compromises his races with shit strategy (which is kinda swept under the rug because we rarely get coverage of Backmarkers so it's hard to follow during the race itself). Even Max can't do wonders with stupid strategy and a shit car combined. If he really was washed how come that up until his promotion to vcarb he outperformed Checo in tests and sims?

I know this is a business at the end of the day but it still doesn't make sense, and I just don't see Liam outperforming him in six races. And as much as I liked Liam last season, his entry is tainted to me the same way Oscar's first win was by the circumstances

(sorry for the long ask, I just needed to vent. All the comments I see are how it was time for Daniel to leave but no one bothers to take into account how the team failed him)

RB not announcing it or letting Daniel tell the media was fucked up. Especially when the head of VISA didn’t even know what was happening and it seemed like neither did Mekies. Whatever went on there, he shouldn’t have had to walk into the media pen not able to answer questions.

I don’t buy this “he didn’t perform” narrative. He drove the shitbox they gave him to the level it is clearly at. What could they possibly have been expecting him to pull out of that car? When frankly he’s used to driving better and had close to a year off between the hand break and everything. They 100% wanted him in that Red Bull at some point.

The keeping Checo is about more than money for Red Bull, it’s about money for the sport. I do believe the rumour that Liberty stepped in when checo was going to lose his seat because he’s the only driver in the grid from latam, my guy is carrying that whole market and that whole Mexico GP on his back. Not to mention apparently Carlos Slim is an investor in Liberty Media. It seems like Formula 1 wants to keep Checo around more than Red Bull, but he’s probably keeping RB in the black as well.

Liam won’t outperform Daniel in 6 races, but Liam has maybe a decade left of career, Daniel doesn’t.

And honestly, I don’t think Daniel wanted to sit around in TR. he was there to get back to RB, when it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, he probably would have walked at the end of the season or the next one.

I think RB did him dirty not allowing him to leave with the proper timing but I also think timing or not timing, his time was up there because of him as much as them.

But helmut hanging him out to dry about performance is so funny when the job he was auditioning for was to literally keep the car out of the wall while Max wins. Because that’s all Checo has been doing…sometimes. And I don’t believe that they didn’t think Daniel could do a better job. I know helmut isn’t keen on Daniel but I do think this is revisionist bullshit from him. He likes to make it seem like RB is still the cutthroat outfit from 2019 when in reality they’ve built their team identity around Max and beyond that everything else has gone to shit.

They binned Daniel because they have tied themselves in knots with their driver management. That’s what I think.

And yes the performance had a part to play but I don’t think it’s even top 3 in the reasons this all happened

[sergeantsporks]

Hi!

Until this day, I'm still confused: At what age did the Wittebane brothers go to the boiling isles? Teenagers/Child as seen in the portraits or Adults since Gravesfield has statues of them as adults? What do you think?

Great question! [leaves]

I think every single interpretation of what happened with the Wittebane Brothers/the WB timeline has SOME kind of hole poked in it by SOME aspect of canon.

I believe the most solid answer we have is when Phillip got to the Isles. He's a liar with a penchant for revisionist history, so his journal can't be trusted for... most things... but I think one thing he had no reason to lie about is the fact that when he started the journal, he'd only recently arrived in the Isles. So, we can somewhat safely assume that Phillip got to the Isles (or, at least, got stuck there) in his early adulthood. From there, we know he ate a palisman at some point, found Caleb and Evelyn, killed Caleb, ran off. Done and done.

When Caleb jetted for the Isles is a bit more up for debate. The pictures in Hollow Mind seem to imply that he hadn't seen Phillip for some time, so if they DID go to the Isles at the same time, they were quickly separated. The more popular interpretation is that Caleb left Phillip when he was younger, Phillip spent some time in the human realm alone, he finally worked up the courage to follow/a portal finally opened up, he entered as a young adult, timeline proceeds from there. However, like you said, the statues are of them as ADULTS, and the two of them TOGETHER, which makes this theory a little shakey. But hey, maybe the statues were made way later by people who didn't really know them. At the very least, by the time the story gets to modern day, it's been distorted into a cautionary ghost tale, so who knows what the tale was when the statue was carved?

The question of "when did Caleb leave" is also deeply tied to the question of "WHY did he leave." Was it simply that he finally got fed up with witch-hunter society? Did Phillip hit some arbitrary age that he considered as no longer needing him, so he felt safe leaving? Was there a catalyst that FORCED him out? Did Evelyn get pregnant at that point, and Caleb left to be a father to his kid? We know he and Evelyn passed notes and titan's blood back and forth to each other, so SOMETHING must have happened to escalate the situation and get Caleb to leave instead of continuing that way.

A personal favorite theory of mine is that Caleb was going back and forth, a dumb teen, as one does with one's illicit girlfriend, Phillip caught him going into the portal (the image from hollow mind of Caleb going in while Phillip trails behind), and Phillip, thinking his brother was bewitched, rounded up the witch-hunters. However, instead of them catching Evelyn, they caught Caleb, and put him on trial. They planned to hang him, but Evelyn came to his rescue, burning down the town hall in the process (since Jacob mentioned the fire, I imagine it’s a LITTLE significant). With it no longer being safe to stay in Gravesfield, Caleb went with her to the demon realm, happily unaware that Phillip was the one who (accidentally) got him arrested. However, the statue pokes holes in this theory AGAIN. Again, it's them as adults, and why would the town have such a positive view of CALEB if they viewed him as a probable witch or witch accomplice?

I do like the thought that the fire was a catalyst for Caleb to leave though, so another theory is that Caleb was going back and forth, as previously stated. He is incredibly successful in pretending that he is still a gung-ho witch hunter. Phillip is kinda sorta aware of what Caleb's up to, but he's also a kid, and as he gets older, he dismisses memories as fantasy as Caleb gets better at hiding it, OR he actually, contrary to popular fanon belief, really really really doesn't want his brother to get hung for witchcraft, so he's willing to keep the secret until he can figure out how to "break Evelyn's hold on Caleb" (because he absolutely believes Caleb is bewitched; especially if he successfully acts like a normal witch hunter most of the time. Obviously, when Evelyn's there, he's bewitched, and the witch hunting facade is what he'd be without that. Surely the witch-hunting isn't an act).

The town hall burns down. Maybe it was an accident, maybe not, but either way, Gravesfield goes on the hunt for the Witch, and they are 100% gunning for Evelyn. Caleb finally comes to the conclusion that it is no longer safe for their relationship to continue the way it is, so he has to make a snap decision to either break off his relationship with Evelyn and stay in the human realm with Phillip, or he has to leave Phillip and go with Evelyn to the demon realm. He picks the latter, and Phillip sees. Still intending to "save" his brother from Evelyn and get everything to go back to the way it was, Phillip spins a story about how Caleb heroically chased after the witch that burned down their town hall, but the door to her home closed behind them.

Timeline then goes to what we know: Phillip enters the Isles, finds Caleb, finally admits to himself that Caleb is a "lost cause," and the witch-hunting was an act, not Caleb's true self, the stabbening, etc, etc. This would account for the fire, for the overall positive feelings the townsfolk must have for Caleb and Phillip in order to build a statue, Phillip's memories of Evelyn and the portal in his early childhood coinciding with the statue of them as adults (that one definitely still is a little wonky, but we'll put it up to artistic license. After Phillip disappeared as a young adult, someone carved a representation of Phillip finding his lost brother [who would also be an adult at that time.] Yeah, we'll say that).

Masha implies that the rebuses are a more recent find, so I think it's safe to say that from those rebuses, they extrapolated a more true version of the legend, like the secret codes, and the undertone of Caleb being "dazzled" rather than a heroic guy chasing down a witch, although the idea that Phillip went to "save" Caleb remained. Since Masha seems to be a practicing witch themself, it makes sense that they'd spin the tale with the information they have from the original legend and the new information from the rebuses to make it a little more witch-friendly while still sort of "respecting" the original tale of witchcraft spiriting away two boys. They have a more modern take, even going so far as the "sounds like big bro got a hot witch girlfriend" statement at the end. The statue is reminiscent of an older take possibly based on lies Phillip told to protect Caleb. Neither are a complete story, but if you take the common ground between them, account for the agendas of both parties, and fill in the gaps from Phillip's memories, we can sort of see a full picture.

[mythorhuman]

why don't you and most Bonnie stans like her relationship with Enzo?

I don't speak for everyone but that ship was never of interest to me for several reasons. Most of these reasons revolve around Enzo himself. When people do like Enzo, their reasonings have absolutely nothing to do with canon. His accent and appearance hold too much weight because his character is severely lacking. It's kinda like we're watching completely different shows which is the fault of the writers. Enzo was created to be a bad boy for Caroline, but plans changed partially due to Candice's pregnancy. With the shift in plans, comes a lot of revisionist history when it comes to Enzo and his character.

I saw someone say he was a caring person and gave Sarah Salvatore as an example. He literally sought out to destroy her life and then did a random 180. He was the one who put Sarah in danger in the first palace just to mess with Stefan. The flip-flopping pretty much embodies Enzo as a character. He was pissed Stefan killed Maggie and that suddenly went away when he discovered it was Damon. Out of nowhere, he decides he didn't really love Maggie in the first place. Way to treat her as the disposable black girlfriend, Enzo. He was beefing with Stefan obsessively for nothing?! Every other character has a motivation (something to fuel their behavior) and he just doesn't have one. Why the hell did he even stay in Mystic Falls? We don't know! Between his inconsistencies, lack of legitimate motivations and pointlessness, he's exhausting as a character to deal with.

The BE relationship is romanticized to the point of making Enzo an angel. It's honestly a bit preposterous that he is the man they claim deserves Bonnie. How is he any different from the rest of them? People act like he didn't kill innocent people (e.g. Tom Avery). Maybe it's because they don't pay his character any attention. They just ignore that he is a murderous vampire who has also been physically aggressive towards Bonnie. He has no moral high ground in comparison to the rest of vampires. While most of my criticism may seem like an attack on their shippers, it's actually a criticism of how Bonenzo is written.

They don't have much history nor do the actors have chemistry. And the little history that they do have (Enzo attacking Bonnie, Bonnie cutting off his limb) goes completely unaddressed. This is because their relationship isn't built from a connection or shared history. It's built off co-dependency. Their weak bond is further exemplified when Damon returns. Their entire relationship revolves around Damon. Damon shouldn't be able to insert himself so easily into their relationship, if their love was so strong. People shouldn't have to make things up to find things redeemable about Enzo as a character or like BE as a ship. I think part of my issue with Enzo is that the devil (Julie Plec) claimed Bonnie would never be with a murderous vampire. Enzo isn't a saint, despite his last name. He's given a pass for his evil deeds so that the devil can justify keeping Bonnie away from leading male characters. Bonnie isn't seen as a romantic competition for the other female characters. Hell, Enzo even says she isn't used to men fighting over her. In this instance, Enzo is being used by the writers to further belittle Bonnie. To put it simply, Enzo sucked.

[zedreh]

Okay, time for another opinion.

Now, before I begin, I would just like to say a few things, just so no one gets the wrong idea of me.

I have no real problem with Tim Drake being made bisexual, even if most people who worked on the character probably did not intend on him being so. I feel that the only real problem with changing a pre-established character's sexuality is that you're retconning what came before. If it's done well, then I'm pretty much fine with it.

Also, while I'm not a fan of it, I'm cool with people shipping Tim Drake and Connor Kent.

Now, with that out of the way, I would just like to say... I can not stand Tim with Bernard. Bernard is such a flat and boring character. He feels like pre-death, non-revisionist Gwen Stacy, and I can never understand how people were actually upset with that woman being killed off. But at least she had some personality, unlike Bernard ever since they started having him and Tim go out. Granted, all Gwen really had going for her was being kinda mean at times, a daddy's girl, and hating Spider-Man after her dad died, but still, at least it was something. Sorry to those who like Tim with Bernard, but I, for the life of me, just can not bring myself to like these two together.

Also, to clarify, if anyone reading this hasn't seen my last post, this isn't a timsteph thing. I think Tim and Steph are fine, but I'm honestly not that big a fan of them. I don't hate or dislike them like some people do, and while sometimes, the two can be written as pretty toxic, I think when they aren't, they're great. It's just that for whatever reason, they just don't quite click with me. At least I like Steph as a character. She's great, and I wish she was in more adaptations so that more casual fans could see that, too. It's just that while I like her and Tim together, I guess I just don't, for lack of better term, love her and Tim together.

Ok, with all that said, I noticed that somehow, looking at Tim's current relationship and then also his longest reoccurring one, I find myself carrying less about them, and more about his short-lived romance with a member of the X-Men that admittedly, could have used a little more time for development... so maybe I'm just weird.

[kirk]

hiiii i’d love to hear your thoughts on the hiatus revisionist history if you feel comfortable sharing :^)

ouhhh yeah ofc ill try not make this too long cause its not like groundbreaking nor like complicated yk i honestly just think both when they say they were still friends AND never spoke are both true statements like... 3-ish years IS a long time, especially for two guys who spent. nearly 10 years together almost Constantly yknow? so...

a lot can change and shift in those 3 years. if we look at like... the lead up to the hiatus you can definitely see patrick be a lot more distant with pete (except for a few examples that are like... oh ok you weirdos made up for a week huh) and its obviously from all the tension and just, natural drifting cause of that tension and then the start of the hiatus i really think they did not speak much at all, both because of the grieving of the "loss" of the band and the anger that grieving would fuel, etc. like even if they always thought it was always an hiatus, theyre dramatic, if they dont do it anymore for any length of time its like the end of the fucking world <3 so start of hiatus i feel like, they did not speak and that was when patrick would like... not return calls to pete, or talk to him much, he probably was fully in like... trying to gather together stuff to make his solo projects and we all know patricks just MIA when hes in creating mode, and he was 100% using that to deal with the "loss" of fob, we then get to pete's divorce and i feel like around this time they wouldve reconnected a bit again but maybe after a bit of back and forth (eg the "what do u want" text bit), a good example of them reconnecting in some form would be pete suddenly bringing out his stump club shirt in 2011 like a month after his divorce

i feel like because of his divorce and ofc patrick being around for all of his relationship with ashlee, they would have reconnected in a time that pete wouldve needed comfort and familiarity and it had been over a year since the hiatus started so the initial grief and anger wouldve 100% died down and i feel like this is when pete would have said like. you dont even know my son, etc, like patrck was also at petes place for a good chunk of time in april 2011 which is only shortly after pete brings out that shirt, however, some shit happened after this that we literally have no clue What and they kinda fall out again, maybe not fully like what happened at the start of the hiatus but definitely a falling out again (eg patrick saying in zane lowe "i thought we were [fine] but then you--") and fast forward then to all THAT stuff with SP being redone and redone way more angrily and then we get to death of a pariah and it kinda really makes them reconnect but like... less to do with familiarity (repeating the cycle of how they got into a tension-filled mess that resulted in the hiatus in the first place) and more to do with, lets rebuild, lets do this different, lets go back to our roots and do it to create again, lets go back and relearn what made us best friends in the first place and we can really... really see that, i wont show it but the leaked picture of pete and patrick at patricks wedding in 2012 really shows the like, rebuilt relationship i think, the youthful joy again that just wasnt there on the lead up to the hiatus nor in patricks depression-filled frenzy with SP and then. well. it kinda just never broke after that, amen. so basically. yeah they both WERE still friends/considered the other their friend but also they probably didnt like each other much/didnt want to see the other for at least TWO chunks of time during the hiatus until the Actual Healthy Reconnection circa early 2012-ish where they dont just reconnect in a way they were used to but instead in a way that was to rebuild from the ground up. this part is a little speculation cause im not pete nor patrick but i feel like because patrick normally isnt that explosive and open about his mental health, pariah just kinda forced the both of them to REALLY talk, because, patrick had put it all out there, there was no taking it back, pete now knew how patrick felt and well. as patricks biggest hypeman he couldnt let that go and it just forced patrick to just fucking talk about how he felt for once, which allowed pete to recontextualise shit and also heal from shit which in turn let him help patrick heal a bit, esp with those early songwriting hang outs p2 had, which then in turn made patrick more open to asking how joe felt which allowed joe to feel happy to come back to fob which in turn rebuilt fall out boy. etc. yeah. anyway hi. i love to ramble

[mayasdeluca]

So I know the S19 cast are really going through it and it must be tough knowing the show could potentially be over forever. But c'mon they're not helping any by not even trying to give fans BTS. At least something!? I'm not being insensitive here but it's kinda ridiculous that there's absolutely nothing from anyone.

Stefania tried in the beginning but then stopped immediately after the announcement.

Jaina tried abit but tbh the Marina Fandom can sometimes be abit mean to her. Which is insane cos she seems like such an awesome person and her podcast is super funny and entertaining.

Danielle isn't doing anything. Idk she seems over everything. Perhaps she doesn't want to carry the load of promoting the show anymore. She really only posts stuff about her and Kevin and her besties kid. So that ship has sailed awhile ago it seems.

Overall if ABC is not going to do much promoting and the cast isn't going to do any BTS and social media stuff... the Fandom will eventually get exhausted.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm living in an alternate universe to some people because....what???

What is with this revisionist history when it comes to Jaina and the Marina fandom with people...all of a sudden everyone is ready to defend her and love her as if things have changed....she has never been supportive of Marina and as soon as they got popular she stopped acknowledging them completely. She clearly has her issues with Danielle (which makes it even more confusing that these so called Danielle fans are suddenly all about Jaina), only acknowledges Stefania when it's convenient for her, barely interacts with fans or promotes the show she's a lead on, has yet to acknowledge that said fans are trying to save the show that again, she's the lead on...I have truly never seen a lead act like she does and somehow she gets excused for it and it's all blamed on Marina fans when she's hardly been professional about things.

How are you going to say Danielle seems over everything? She was literally in tears at the convention just a month ago when it was brought up that the show could be ending. She was the first to speak publicly like that about fighting to save the show. She actually does not post Kevin and hasn't really posted him in months so I don't know where you're getting that from...it's not her fault that people in this fandom are creepers and find stuff from whatever they do over the holidays together and decide to post it.

[thegreatklaid]

Shadows of Provoking My Ire

If you get that reference hoooo boy, that's a doozy lemme tell you.

Well so now we begin with my biggest obstacle whether I wanted to commit to this stupid idea in the first place. Good ol' Final Fantasy II.

If you know, you know. If you don't, good news I'm gonna tell you. FFII adds a ton to what made the series. Chocobos and Cid finally appear here. Yeah, there isn't actually a Cid in I. That's revisionist bullshit in later versions. This is the first game with Cid. I forget if this one has rows. I don't think that's until III though.

No, what this game does is it gets rid of XP in favor of, well people now know it as the SaGa system. The more you attack you get more strength. Get hit more, you get more HP. That kinda thing. This game is the infamous Kawazu's debut. This is where that system comes from, albeit taken from TTRPGs, sooooort of.

So, as it might seem, my memories of this game is pretty poor. I don't like this game. And it's not solely on the levelling system. This game has some brutal bosses and dungeons. Especially the trap rooms. Which, the first two games only ever had treasures in sectioned off rooms. FFI had plenty of empty rooms that you had to walk a few steps in to see if they had treasure on the back walls. FFII has those except the door warps you to the back of the room and you have to walk out and every step is an encounter. Because I just kind of hate Kawazu. As you'll learn in 10 more games.

So that's what I remember. What do I hope to accomplish this run? Nothing. I'm gonna beat this stupid game. Get it out of the way. In fact I'm excited that I get to play this game knowing how to use the Blood Sword. Because the first time I played this I kept the stupid thing in my off hand, because it said it had a really low attack stat. So I just kept it for the drain. Turns out, it uses a whole different formula and it just gibs bosses. However, I promise a lot of my runs from here on are going to be way less cheese than I normally play these with. But this game we are cranking up the cheese. No apologies.

As it is now very obvious, I don't expect to really like this game anymore than the others in the series, but I am curious if I'll like it more in the grand scheme of things. Almost 20 years later, I have played way more games than I did when I was 12. ugh. So maybe FFII will become a blemish on the series instead of that weird time Square almost pissed away the best thing they ever had.

See you guys in a few days when I get through this thing! Or maybe I'll come by every now and then to give you guys some updates. We'll see. It took me about 5 days of playing FFI to beat that one. I might rush this one...

[butmakeitgayblog]

I was in the middle of sending you a wholesome meme cos it seems like you’ve had a rough time lately (which girl me too is Mercury in Retrograde lately wtf 🥲) and then this is how I get the news that Fucking Joanne™️ is doing Holocaust revisionism now lmao it’s like she knew I’d finally lowered my blood pressure 🥴

But I suppose that’s all the more reason for a wholesome meme cleanse so *throws this at you, runs back into bed and tries to get some goddamn sleep*

I literally looked it up and it's not, so can't even blame this shit on mercury 😒

Believe me dude I was as bamboozled as you when I read that shit. I mean I shouldn't have been. Cuz honestly terfs are gonna terf and like any bigot they'll just lie and motte-bailey and rewrite history at will to fit their narrative and never think twice about it because the end result always HAS to be that they're right and incapable of ever making a mistake.

They are always infallible. Their detractors just don't understand the logical nuances of their totally-not-wrong argument 😤

What really kills me tho is that no matter how much evidence is brought to the table about just how hateful (and lbr kinda dumb) she is, her cult will not listen. They won't. They will just blindly follow her and believe her rhetoric over historical facts. They'll twist themselves into pretzels to excuse anything she says or does, because admitting she is wrong about even 1 thing would mean admitting there's a possibility that she's wrong about others, meaning there's a possibility they really have just been following along and supporting a transphobe who has ties with antisemitic themes within her writing and who is now spouting holocaust revisionist talking points.

Except she's not, right? Cuz Joanna is never wrong ಠ_ಠ

She's just a champion for Women™®

It's just.... sigh.

Anyway, go to bed deary, and thank you for the well wishes. Wish for me to actually get answers 🤞

[golbrocklovely]

very, very interesting point about whether some people in the paranormal community hold snc at a distance - i think I agree. I've seen some of that sentiment on tiktok/YT/reddit, especially from an older crowd that still seems to have a bit of a bias against YT and popular creators. that they're not "serious" enough and working with them might tarnish a certain hardcore contingent's credibility. interestingly, I don't really see that at all with Shane & Ryan, who had a bizarre revisionist history spin with Ghost Files coming out where suddenly they're like the best ghost hunters ever and not uhhh.. two goofy guys at Buzzfeed who would do stuff like wear cat ears and show their belly buttons to try to seduce ghosts. when snc first started dabbling in 2018ish, hell when Shane and Ryan first started out, this sort of judgement and skepticism didn't really exist in the same way it does now. fascinating how a paranormal community has really been developing but I can see how that complicates collabs snc may want to do. (and they're also well-liked by tons of paranormal content creators too so I'll cherish the ones we get ig)

this became such a long response, my bad lol

well a lot of the ppl that do paranormal investigating for a living are usually much older than snc so i think a lot of them feel like snc are just jumping on a bandwagon and will leave once it no longer makes them money. but i don't agree with that.

and again, i also do and don't believe the idea that snc aren't serious enough or not professional enough to be taken seriously. they just do things their own way. which can be both good and bad but i think it is what sets them apart. also realistically, they are entertainers first before anything else. so if they were stoic and had no reaction to some of the shit they have experienced, ppl would be bored and no one would watch.

slight side tangent, but i saw on reddit someone saying that they think snc will never get taken seriously enough bc, among a bunch of other stuff, they curse a lot. like……… you can't be serious. hate to be the bear of bad news, but tons of everyday ppl curse frequently. and i highly doubt snc are in a profession where cursing is frowned upon lol

i think one of the problems snc face, still, is that ppl see their content as what they did way back in the day. like 2019/when sam used to do the 3 am challenges. like they see that, and think that that's what they are still doing, which just isn't the case. but bc there is already that notion that snc are """liars""", ppl that don't like them for those reasons aren't gonna give them a chance. but honestly they have improved so much over the years, it's a shame some ppl write them off.

but whatever, your loss sksk

as for shane and ryan, honestly i haven't watched them since they were on buzzfeed so i can't really comment on what they do now. but from what i've heard from other ppl/fans is that they don't really do the same shit they once did. like obviously there is some overlap for sure, but the vibe is different.

maybe this is just a misconception, idk, but i gotta ask: the way some ppl talk about them, they make it seem as if they are just goofy and don't take it seriously anymore. like i know ryan used to believe in all this stuff and shane was the one that outwardly would joke about demons and not believe anything paranormal that could happen, but like… is that different now? i genuinely want to know bc that's the vibe i get from other ppl's comments. like now they make a mockery of what they used to do/ghost hunting in general, but not in a mean way. more as in like "we don't really believe and we're trying to show you this shit is bs too" or whatever. kinda like how the later seasons of ghost hunters, they would actively disprove their evidence or constantly trying to find a logically explanation instead of just… accepting that it might actually be paranormal.

i'm not saying any of this to be mean to shane and ryan. i'm just genuinely curious as to if i'm right or not. bc again i haven't watched them since they were on buzzfeed.

if i'm honest, i love the paranormal. i love ghost hunting and the supernatural. i find it all fascinating. however…. i think it's a bit silly to try and argue who's the best ghost hunter or who should or shouldn't be taken seriously. i mean, there is no science to this. this is a profession that you kinda have to have a bit of a whimsical nature to you, otherwise you look goofy lol

maybe i'm wrong, but i think both snc and shane and ryan can exist in the same universe without it being a who's better than who fight. i think a collab would be a bit strange, but i also wouldn't be completely against it in theory.

[gayferrari]

Just some points that I am remembering about the podcast with günther:

they were discussing toto's obsession with max and whether having max on the team with lewis (from like 2014/15 onwards) would have been a bigger or smaller problem than what they had with nico (they all agree max/lewis would have been a bigger headache)

And günther also said kimi has 2ish years to prove himself and if he doesn't he'll be dropped by mercedes

I actually ended up listening to it last night and this morning and ngl I did Not expect Guenther Steiner to be the most bearable part about it 😭

I actually wish they'd made clearer what they meant by “Max in Mercedes would have been a bigger headache than Nico to Toto”. Like, I agree, but by “bigger headache” EYE mean Ferrari snatching the constructor championship at least a couple of times in between 2015 and 2018. They were talking like they thought early years Max could be a real challenge to prime Lewis in the same car and like, lol. I've said this before but I think so many of these what-ifs around tiny Max at Mercedes and comparisons with Kimi Antonelli (who's!! 18!!) are very revisionists of how long it actually took Max to develop as a complete driver. I think before he got to the point where he could have been a real threat to Lewis for the (driver) championship, he'd have moved teams to somewhere where he was the clear priority. IDK!! I feel like the “Toto couldn't get his hands on Max so he's trying to create his own Max” kinda takes are obviously Right There and I understand why people go for it but also kinda shallow at the end of the day and I'd expect better insight from quote unquote industry insiders.

I also get their point that tiny Kimi won't have forever to prove himself but again, so much of the speculation is kinda baseless when we don't know how playing field and seat availability will look like in 2 years.

anyway tldr red flag pod isn't for me I fear 😌

[dukeofriven]

A hearty ‘get fucked’ to every last person who felt the need to hound Lindsay Ellis out of being a content creator. You accomplished nothing of value except the satisfaction that your fevered little minds scored a victory against perceived oppression. Joe Manchin just essentially sliced the throat of an already utterly inadequate and pathetic centrist bill that nevertheless provided badly needed succour to thousands of suffering people - a tactic that will do nothing but put actual hate-crime enthusiasts back into the White House in two years - but today you got Lindsay Ellis to give up critiquing movies. Wow, what a victory for Progressivism. Really purified that space from the threat of revisionist fifth-column false progressive who say such hate filled screeds like... let me check my notes here... “Also watched Raya and the Last Dragon and I think we need to come up with a name for this genre that is basically Avatar: the Last Airbender reduxes. It’s like half of all YA fantasy published in the last few years anyway.” Wow. Thank god that harpy of right-wing degeneracy can no longer voice such heinous, criminal, thought-crime anti-leftist drivel. What’s that? America still doesn’t have paid maternal leave? It has the highest rate of maternal mortality among first-world countries? Children are gunned down every day because there is zero political or cultural will to in any way confront the nation’s incapacity to safely own fire arms? Yeah that’s bad - but look on the bright side, Lindsay Ellis won’t say that Raya and the Last Dragon and ATLA are kinda similar any more! Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last! I don’t know what goes on in your lives. It would be nice to think that every last one of you is so wounded from trauma that you are non compos mentis when it comes to social media usage - that all of this can be forgiven, that no one is in any way culpable, that this was all just something that happened in which nobody was actually involved. But no. No I don’t really care to do that. Because Ellis isn’t the first for whom this has happened in progressive spaces, nor wil l she be the last - she’s just the latest, and one whom I happen to personally enjoy and thus someone whose loss I feel quite keenly. But all of you, collectively, are fuckers. Hateful fuckers. Every one of you knowing participated in bad faith readings of a pretty anodyne person. There are real monsters in this world, real, actual goddamn monsters, and I don’t know if y’all are too scared to spend your lives confronting them instead of the truly pointless shit you get worked up about, or just too fucking stupid to realize the truly awful decisions you make, but here we are anyway. I am angry. I am so very angry and so very tired of this shit. I’m so angry I want to start getting mean. I want to start saying all the awful shit I keep buried inside me because I still hold to the wild idea that some bare, barrel-scraping minimum of civility and tiniest check on my ego means not smearing shit on a screen and calling it social justice. But god, everyone else gets to be mean about, why can’t I. Well I tried. I wrote a big chunk and I just deleted it because it isn’t worth my time. It’s not because I’m better than you, I think I’m just more tired. I got enough death threats that time I laid out all the stats about America’s daily child gun murders and said maybe it doesn’t fucking matter than you personally like guns and know how to use them safely, your country collective can’t so you shouldn’t have them. God only knows what kind of hounding I’d get saying something really controversial. What if I betrayed the leftist cause and openly said, I don’t know, The Mitchells vs The Machines is a mediocre mess if you sit and think about it for ten seconds. Y’know. That really evil, Goebbels-esque shit. The sad truth is that to a particular contingent of the progressive internet, you can never be ‘good enough.’ There is no passable purity test because purity is in the eyes of each individual in the contingent whose one sole belief appears to be ‘anything that does not perfectly reflect my lived experience is a hostile act against me.’ It is bad faith because it lives on a universal presumption of malice. It cannot be reasoned with because it is irrational. Whatever fuels it - and lets even be charitable and say that in many cases it is trauma and abusive experiences, a lifetime of racism or trans-phobia or homophobia or abelism - ends up ultimately being irrelevant, because your trauma and pain don’t ever justify sending someone death threats because you’re so bugnuts crazy that you read anodyne tweets as macroagressions. And yeah - “bugnuts crazy.” I said it. You go from ‘suffering from mental health problems’ to ‘bugnuts crazy’ when you cross the line of ‘hounding creators off the internet for minor to outright non-existent transgressions that a group with a less aggressively fragile sense of self wouldn’t even notice.’ Sending death threats over an ATLA/Raya comparison is, to me, a line over which I cannot cary sympathy. It’s really hard to have empathy for people who have empathy and understanding for no one but themselves and crow about inflicting pain on others. I have decided that for my own mental health, I don’t have to be respectful of your mental health when you don’t extend that same courtesy to anyone. So get fucked, you genuine bat-shit crazy lunatics. Get absolutely fucked you hate-filled, small-cocked, comically-ugly, permanently-weird-smelling suburban baboons. Conratu-fucking-lations: you resurrected Maoist struggle sessions for maximum purification of Progressive ideology, you utterly ignorant, self-absorbed, ego-onanistic neo-Calvanist shitwaffles. The left is just doing so fucking well with people like you in the mix. The fact that everything in the world sucks all the time, and the fact that every day you wake up anxious, alone, in pain, and filled with fear is because progressive Youtube creators were faking progressivism for clicks, as can be proven by dissecting their Tweets with a fine-edged scalpel. You did it! You solved the mystery! Your death threats and glottal screaming to a stranger on Twitter saved us all! Your sad fantasies proved real: the saviour is you! Your keyboard activism was the solution! Late capitalism is over, Conservatism has vanished, all races, creeds, identities, and self-expressions live in total harmony, and there’s jam for tea. All thanks to you, person who observed how the right treated the left in internet spaces and said ‘I am also going to do the exact same thing to the left, but I’ll do it from a place of caring.’ Such nobility of purpose you have shown, and boy - waves hand at the world of December 2021 - its working so well!

Get. Fucked.

[gojuo]

Ive not read any of the books so I'm genuinely curious as to how aegon is better than rhaenyra? From what I've heard around Tumblr they are both bad but still why do u think he is better. Like an example if you have. Just curious. Also from last episode on i feel this show is gonna be really revisionist and very pro rhaenyra and it is annoying me especially since alicent is awesome (atleast for now... again haven't read the books) and they keep beating her down and i want her to one up viserys who is the worst.

Also love your takes

To be fair, it's really not that hard to be a better person than Rhaenyra, since she is one of the worst of the worst in F&B. She really has no redeemable qualities, like AT ALL. Comparing Aegon and Rhaenyra to each other is like do you want to get stabbed or get shot? Well, poison is poison either way.

I don't mean that Aegon was a better person than Rhaenyra, morally. I mean it in a political player kind of way. Although, that also does not mean he was a good politician. Rhaenyra's politics and principles are just slightly worse than Aegon's and while that makes him a better person compared to Rhaenyra, it does not make him a better person overall.

The show has kinda forced my hand into defending the Greens, but make no mistake: The Dance of the Dragons had no moral justification, or a "right side". It may come off as if I'm Team Green, and I mean with the show I kinda am, but in the book it's crystal clear that this was a godawful war between two spoiled and entitled children who claimed the right to rule over the people but then did nothing but put the people through 2 years of horrific nuclear war. No so-called monarch deserves to call himself such when he or she is supposed to be protecting the realm, making the realm prosper. Neither Rhaenyra or Aegon did this.

F&B book spoilers under the cut.

To first get his negative qualities out of the way, Aegon cheated on his wife left and right, probably fathered multiple bastards (book is not sure), was a serial sexual harasser, he liked to "pinch or fondle any serving girl who strayed within his reach", was a habitual drunk, characterized as very lazy, quick to anger, slow to forgive, etc. etc. That is his personality, so no I don't think he was morally a good person.

However, the part where I think Aegon was a better politician than Rhaenyra was the simple fact that unlike Rhaenyra, Aegon actually listened to his advisors' council (and anything closer to democracy is better than Rhaenyra's totalitarianism). When his council advised Aegon to send peace terms to Rhaenyra, while he originally did not want to do that, he eventually did send peace terms to his sister. He followed his council's advice to not attack Dragonstone because it was at an inopportune moment, but most importantly, he allowed his prisoners of war leniency, something Rhaenyra never did. He allowed Rhaenyra's bannermen who his army had captured the leniency to defect to his side, or bend the knee as GRRM likes to say. Rhaenyra never did the same.

In fact, after Rhaenyra took King's Landing and became Queen for half a year, instead of choosing to end the war and stabilize the realm and perform her duties, she chose to continue warring all in pursuit of personal vengeance and her whims. She outright rejected her advisors' counsel of war-ending efforts and counsel for peace. (Fuck it's been a very long time since I last read F&B so the details are a bit murky please forgive me) She insisted on inflicting severe punishments on those who served Aegon, lined the walls of the Red Keep with severed heads daily (something that soured the smallfolk's opinion of her and led them to compare her to Maegor the Cruel), refused to offer reasonable surrender terms to the Lord Paramounts on the Greens' side, had members of the small council executed, etc. etc. All of this sent a rather clear message to anyone and everyone: Bend the knee to Rhaenyra and die, or meet the Blacks in the battlefield and die. She practically ensured that the lords on Aegon’s side would stay loyal to him and continue to fight for him until the very bitter end. Both choices would lead to death, so why not go down fighting? Rhaenyra had, as Queen, actively rejected any attempt of peace talks and chose to pursue the path of vengeance instead.

Furthermore, one thing I personally like better from Aegon is that he himself actively fought on the front lines and in battle with his Sunfyre for his crown whereas Rhaenyra sat her lazy ass down and sent other people to die for her. It's also ironic because a dragon mirrors his rider, and Syrax.... well.... I'll just not spoil this part lol. What I therefore also liked better from Aegon is his relationship with Sunfyre. Sunfyre had killed 3 dragons and in the process became severely wounded, barely able to fly, a mangled mess of dragon. Yet even in his last days, he had found the strength to search for Aegon who he had become separated from, and their reunion was pretty touching and beautiful to me. Like yeah yeah yeah dragons are nuclear weapons, terrible beasts, they're not in the story to be romanticized, but I'll just romanticize this dragon for once, ok? ♥

Moreover, something Aegon never did but Rhaenyra did do is turn on her own allies. She ordered Nettles' execution who was protected under guest right, making Daemon betray her, and she ordered for Addam Velaryon to be arrested, making Corlys betray her. Then she orders for Corlys to be jailed and executed. If Rhaenyra could so easily turn on her most loyal supporters, especially Corlys, a man whose house is so intricately connected to House Targaryen, a man who has been nothing but loyal to Rhaenyra and the Blacks, then what's stopping her from doing the same to any other lord that irked her?

In contrast, Aegon never did such things to his followers. If anything, on Dragonstone, he actually managed to convince Rhaenyra's people to defect to his side which actually allowed him to kill her in the end lol.

Also, one thing that makes me like Aegon a little better than Rhaenyra is this: that fucking awful tax plan of hers in KL which (was one of the reasons that) led to the Storming of the Dragonpit and for the people to yeet her out of KL. Good fucking riddance. Fuck you rich people that bleed the poor dry of our barely present money so that those scumbags at the top can live it up while us normal people stay drowning. Fuck her. Fuck Aegon too but fuck Rhaenyra especially.

To come back to the second part of your ask: show!Rhaenyra and book!Rhaenyra have literally nothing in common outside of their names. Like, I'm serious. As a book purist reader, Rhaenyra in the show is unrecognizable to me. They literally stripped her of all of her characterization, her personality, her role, and rewrote her to be some sort of fucking Mary Sue generic self-insert white supremacist but they'll never call the Targs that ohhh no HBO will never it's so obvious and pathetic blank slate of a character that is like every other single "I'm not like other girls!" character that has been popping up in Western media for the past 7/8 years.

Rhaenyra was a villain. It's what made her intriguing. And they took that away from her. Now she is just an annoying hypocrite who I can't help but roll my eyes at every single time she is on the screen. Boo hoo am I supposed to feel sorry for that bitch? I don't! If she had been actually allowed to stay the bad bitch villain that she was in the book, then I would have actually liked her character because there would be no pretense. But the show so desperately needs me to go "team good guys", "team bad guys" as if 10-year-olds are watching this show instead of grown fucking adults. Fuck off Condal & Sapochnik.

[morethanonepage]

☕ + anything you're feeling salty about 👀

i think a lot of sequels and just fandom content lately has a kind of....narrative revisionism that's very knee-jerk and basic and comes back around to reactionary imo.

like -- i do get the impulse. often i even agree with the impulse!! when the only queer coded or textually queer characters in a narrative are villains, it's very easy to be like, well what if THEY'RE not the villain, the HERO of that narrative is ACTUALLY the villain, and the hero is actually OPPRESSING the villain. you see this a lot with disney hot takes -- Ursula didn't do anything wrong, Scar maybe had a point, etc, etc. I think most of those are fairly harmless (lack of understanding of tortious interference w/r/t Ursula aside).

and sometimes this is can be done well, even beyond queer coded narratives, by really going AFTER what society usually considers a HERO and whether their traits are actually that heroic -- GDT did this explicitly with Michael Shannon's character in The Shape of Water, where he took what would've been the main protagonist in the 60s movies it's based on (upstanding straight white family man w kids and a beautiful wife at home, an apparently very successful government agent) and makes him the antagonist to the marginalized characters that we're rooting for. Not to be cheesy but that's real #Commentary, on society, on the way White Men have been treated as de facto heroes for doing very unheroic things like y'know. Imperialism and the founding & upholding of racist/sexist/homophobic/ableist institutions.

So that's narrative revisionism done well. (see also, loathe as i am to praise star wars on anything, how they're doing all they can to ruin Boba Fett for the portion of fandom that was alllll about idolizing a cool (presumed white) bounty hunter dude.)

But then you have like -- Cobra Kai. Where in the process of trying to broaden the scope of the Karate Kid movies and tell the story from the bully's POV, the show seems to have (unintentionally or not) convinced a BUNCH of people that Daniel Larusso is and was California's Greatest Monster for, idk, fighting back and getting a little mouthy toward a bunch of kids who were older, bigger, and stronger than him. All of which is kicked off by him defending a girl who was single at the time and flirting with him. Like this idea about the "illegal crane kick" (you see other people in that tournament kick their opponents in the face, it's either not illegal or it's not exclusive to Daniel who ~thinks the rules don't apply to him~ or w/e) seems like something that came from fanboys who saw themselves more in the Cobra Kai badasses (how DARE daniel come in and win against these HIGHLY TRAINED fighters when all he did was fuck around w a random japanese man for a few weeks!!! THEY DESERVED IT MORE!!!).

but the villains (or at least, antagonists) of TKK were chosen VERY intentionally: a white vietnam war veteran. a bunch of big, blond, preppy boys. like it's ABOUT the unjustified force!! it's ABOUT the violence inherent in privilege!!! it's ABOUT the othering and mistreatment of people with the most MINOR of deviations (i mean Daniel is white Italian, but the mere fact that he's smaller and like A LITTLE darker than the most popular his preppy California school mates marks him instantly as an outsider & therefore weak and vulnerable). like these are all highly specific critiques of 80s culture and politics, and esp pointed for being in a karate movie of all things.

so going into cobra kai w the presumption of, 'well the cobras worked hard and deserved to win and were kids and didn't do anything that bad really after all daniel fought back and mouthed off to JOHNNY despite the truce and and--' kind of defeats the point? like being revisionist toward a villain who's a villain for their white privilege is.....like coming out Beauty and the Beast going like, that Gaston had some points tho, the Beast WAS kinda rude!!!!

which to be sure is probably disney's next live action reboot plot but like. come on.