#which is what a graph title is supposed to be

[pelahnar]

Of all the parts of writing a social science (rather than a physical science) research paper that I anticipated being difficult...

Titling the graphs was not one of them.

[tiktaalic]

Girls will be like yeah so basically Taylor swift has eradicated all attempts at creativity in favor of seamlessly merging her IDENTITY to PRODUCT and I will give accolades where accolades are due. She has been very successful at this probably the most successful person on earth at this and all it cost her is her soul. And it DID cost a soul. You could make a graph between amount of streams and quality of work and see so clearly the inverse relationship materialize before your eyes. She was not born a hack but embraced the life of a hack when she realized she would be more popular with platitudes and dialing back on oversharing and being less messy. If you replace personhood with producthood you lose your humanity but your album sales go fuuuucking crazy. I can make overtures at understanding this by reminding myself she was crucified for being a person for years and years and she has been very vocal about it doing a heavy number on her psyche. Maybe when that happens to you as a teenager the trade off seems less revolting. Getting rid of something you’re mocked for having anyway and in return you are richer and more famous than anyone has any right to be. But then I scratch my head. And go but surely you see that this is a deal with the devil. Surely with the contract laid out in front of you. You gnaw your lip. You hesitate. You follow the letter of the law but skirt the spirit of it for brief shining moments. And when she’s so publicly had misogynistic vitriol levied at her. So often for so long. IS it misogynistic for your criticisms to boil down to “she’s not likable enough for me”? At what dollar amount does a millionaire going on billionaire become a public object rather than a person? Does the fact that she’s slowly revoked access to herself change this? Is it more or less human to orchestrate your life so that paparazzi only sees you on planned outings where you look impeccable and have a message to send and you are Taylor Swift The Brand after you’ve been scarred by years of being Taylor swift the young woman in the tail end of the aughts and the 2010s ripped to shreds scrutinized for every choice and smile and dress and man? Is there a passable essay in the title Taylor Swift Doesn’t Owe You Authenticity. Maybe! but doesn’t she as an artist work at a job where she’s supposed to produce. Art? It sounds like I’m asking for ballads but I’m really not I’m asking for a song that is good. Im asking for a cruel summer which is irreplicable but surely the minds behind it can produce something more than snow on the fucking beach? Or am I overestimating the continued talent of a woman who is the platonic ideal of a target shopper? Is it misogynistic to believe the platonic ideal of a target shopper can’t create with a soul? How to talk about the fall off of Taylor swift in a woman honoring way?

five minutes later. You can’t spell awesome without ME!

[yesterdays-xkcd]

The one time I tried, I got hit by a slinky going down at double speed.

Escalators [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[A graph with y-axis titled "Urge to try running up the down escalator," with "weak" by the bottom and "strong" by the top. The x-axis has every two years labeled and every year signified by a smaller mark, which stops at 24. A red line with "What I was supposed to feel" with points at every line rises, peaks at 7 years old, then falls "tangent graph" shaped until the end. The graph is shaped like an escalator with the last Cueball having just dismounted. Along this line are shown various Cueball-like figures at 12, 14, 20, and 24. A second red line runs "What I've actually felt," which stays consistently high.]

[the-other-art-blog]

Benophie wish list: Side plots

There's no way around it, Bridgerton has left only 15-18% of the total screen time to the main couple according to these graphs from tw. Individual screen time for the main characters changes, but this is an ensemble. Side plots took almost 50% of the total s3 screen time.

So, we're going to have side plots whether we want them or not, and frankly, they're necessary. Side plots ensure that the audience comes back season after season. I, for example, wouldn't have come back just for Kanthony or Polin if Benedict weren't in the mix.

Eloise (set up for s5)

I bet we will know what Eloise learned about the world during her visit to Scotland. Plus, I'm pretty sure Sophie will be her maid, which will open her eyes to a new social class: servants. Sophie will open her eyes to different views on marriage. For her, marriage is freedom. If El is s5, she needs to understand that marriage is a wonderful and exciting thing if you're with the right person (aka Philip Crane).

Sophie's witty personality and sass are perfect to counter Eloise. I think both women will enjoy the challenge and thrive because of it.

Frannie, John and Michaela

I think they will show the infertility storyline now so that by the time John dies there will be a son or Michaela will be able to inherit the title. I also hope they show Michaela being the biggest flirt and rake. What if she meets Ben at one of the parties! I'll talk more about Fran and Ben later.

The Battle of the Maids

Probably one of the funniest side plots for the matriarchs + more scenes about servants. In the book, Araminta steals maids and fights with confrontations with Portia and Violet about it. This would be a chance to bring back Polly Walker for a cameo + Lady D and maybe the Queen! It plays into the main story because that is how the Bridgertons have an opening for Sophie. Plus, the show has referenced a similar problem: in s2 Portia accuses Lady Cowper of stealing a maid, then in s3 when Lord Remington tells Pen that a Lady stole the host's housekeeper and that's why she didn't get invited to that ball.

Polin/LW

Jess already mentioned there's still a story to tell with Lady Whistledown. Now that Pen is no longer hiding, it would be interesting to see if the column retains its success. The allure to LW was her anonymity because she seemed impartial and therefore reliable. But if a Bridgerton is writing, how are people supposed to believe her? I wonder if this will play into Benophie. LW was very kind to Sophie, she never put in doubt Violet's story and always wrote good things about her. But, who is going to believe Pen's word when she tries to defend Sophie. Of course, she's going to do it, she's a Bridgerton. Moreover, her status as a wallflower allowed her to recollect information by hearing gossip or watching, but now that everyone knows who she is, they will be careful not to say anything near her. Or, they will try to manipulate her to spread false gossip.

Violet and Marcus

I think this will continue in Benophie season. I don't know if this will distract her from noticing that Ben is flirting with a maid or if it will make her ship Benophie even more. I plan to write a separate post on Violet and Ben's relationship. Her romance will make her want romance for her children even more and Ben already stated that Violet is obsessed with epic love stories.

The Queen

I don't know what they can do with her. The sparkler storyline was so stupid, but she was ok in part 2. I was hoping for the queen to be furious at Bridgerton because once again her match didn't work. But she seemed fine. Although, now that LW is out she's going to remember that the Bridgetrons always ignore her. Either she wants to meddle in Benedict's business or she completely ignores the family, which makes Violet nervous. Maybe they are falling out of grace with QC, and this makes Benophie story even more scandalous.

I know there's the theory that Sophie may be an illegitimate granddaughter of the queen. We'll see.

I do want QC to have something to do, even if it's just at the end of the season. I really want a scene between Benedict and QC, if only because Golda loves Luke T.

The Mondriches

Jess said that the show will continue to explore the friendship between Benedict and Will. So, maybe they help him realize how much Sophie means to him and that the sacrifice is worth it. I suppose they will continue hosting balls and being part of society.

Kanthony

I don't think they will have more than a cameo, tbh. Maybe they'll be there at the Masquerade and Benophie's wedding if there is a wedding. But Simone and Johny are too successful now, they won't have much time. I will also write more about Ben and Anthony in another post, but I hope we have a chance to revisit Sienna and show Anthony being concerned about his brother. I wrote a little scene in AO3 about it.

All of these side plots can be related to Benophie giving other characters their screen time while also focusing on the main couple.

Who shouldn't come back:

The Featherington sisters

They're done, they did well this season, and they had their redemption arc.

But there's no space for them! These are 8 sideplots!

Cressida

I used to like the theory where the Cowpers were Sophie's family but after s3, I want her out for good. Instead of showing remorse for her bullying, she indulged in self-pity for 8 episodes. And the worst part is that people bought it. At least book!Cressida was a bitch and she owned it.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about it!

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preseved in our archive (Daily updates!)

By Benjamin Mateus

Stanford University held a conference last month with the misleading title, ���Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past.” Given the utter bankruptcy of the US and global policy in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, one would conclude that a discussion on how the world can address the current and future pandemics is of immense importance and has significant relevance to international public health policies.

However, the one-day conference held at the prestigious university was funded through Collateral Global and supported by Brownstone Institute, promoters of pandemic misinformation and COVID-19 contrarians. It was the opposite of a serious discussion on pandemic preparedness.

To place these organizations into a proper perspective, it bears noting that Robert Dingwall, a British sociologist who has been heavily promoted by Collateral Global, wrote on his blog in March 2020 that the elderly would be better off to die from COVID-19 than to be protected and later die from a degenerative disease like dementia. This was a thinly disguised version of fascistic eugenics—weeding out the “unfit” from society.

The Stanford symposium showcased a panel of discredited scientists and supposed policy health experts associated with the reactionary Great Barrington Declaration, better characterized as a manifesto of death, set on promoting the notion that no broad-based public health initiatives should have ever been undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic or when the next pandemic strikes.

At the core of the debunked “declaration” is the claim that there can be “focused protection” against the pandemic for those at high risk, which would allow those at minimal risk of death to lead normal lives while building up immunity to the virus through natural immunity.

Well-respected global health advocate Peter Hotez said of the conference, “This is awful, a full-on anti-science agenda (and revisionist history), tone deaf to how this kind of rhetoric contributed to the deaths of thousands of Americans during the pandemic by convincing them to shun vaccines or minimize COVID.”

These include discredited figures like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford public policy professor; Dr. Scott Atlas, former Trump administration adviser on the Coronavirus Task Force; and Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s former state epidemiologist, who advocated for a policy of mass infection to achieve “herd immunity” that had horrendous consequences on the population, in particular, the elderly and most frail. Tegnell’s most consequential remark during the conference gave the flavor of the event: “We have focused so much on mortality as a measure of outcome, but there are more important things.”

Included on the panel were Marty Makary, prominent Johns Hopkins University surgeon, who had repeatedly predicted that the population was on the verge of achieving natural immunity and the pandemic would thus come to an end. Also there was Oxford Professor of Epidemiology Sunetra Gupta, one of the original signers of the declaration with Bhattacharya, and Harvard University biostatistician Martin Kuldorff.

Graph compares COVID deaths in the US, Sweden and Norway (which adopted a far more rigorous pandemic mitigation program). [Photo: Our World in Data] Gupta has called for mass infection of the young and declared during the conference that her idea of focused protection had evolved into what she termed “individual risk reduction,” where each person would decide for him or herself the level of protection and mitigation they wanted to assume during a deadly outbreak. This is the literal opposite of public health, treating infection with a highly contagious and potentially lethal disease as a purely individual matter.

That institutions like Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Stanford are at the forefront of promoting such anti-science and anti-public health initiatives speaks to the deep political and moral decline in academic circles. Similarly, these “elite” institutions have embraced censorship and attacks on democratic rights of students protesting the US backing of Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza.

Closing remarks at the Stanford conference were given by John Ioannidis, professor of epidemiology and one of the principal investigators of the fallacious, non-peer-reviewed Santa Clara County study, released in April 2020, which suggested that COVID-19 was no deadlier than the flu and that the pandemic measures to protect populations needed to be lifted forthwith.

At the time of that study, the COVID-19 pandemic was inundating the healthcare system of New York City. The CDC had noted that close to 20,000 people had died in the three-month window (March through May) with an overall crude fatality rate of 9.2 percent. Also, 30 percent of hospitalized patients with laboratory confirmed COVID-19 were known to have died.

Bhattacharya, who had locked arms with AFT President Randi Weingarten in forcing students and teachers back into schools in 2021 and served as a pandemic adviser to Florida’s fascistic Governor Ron DeSantis, attempted to sell the conference as a forum for people with opposing views coming together to air out their differences.

“What can we do in the future? The pandemic was by any measure a disaster,” he declared. Although he cited the correct number of deaths and economic turmoil caused by the pandemic affecting the poorest in the world, he blamed these losses, not on the failure to carry out systematic public health measures but on the measures themselves. It was a translation into academic jargon of the notorious declaration by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that “the cure can’t be worse than the disease.”

Bhattacharya had the audacity to assert, “this conference was four years too late, but this is not too late, this is not the last pandemic the world will face.” The purpose of his efforts to codify the perspectives put forth by the Great Barrington Declaration is to ensure no real effort is taken by any government to address any threat, including the current bird flu outbreak that threatens to ignite another pandemic.

His ideas have nothing to do with the field of epidemiology or any scientific comprehension of the nature of pandemics. If he has a bone to pick with the Biden administration and its response to the pandemic is that Biden and Harris did not adopt the mass infection policy officially from the beginning, but only implemented it piecemeal.

Additionally, Bhattacharya has positioned himself as a fellow traveler with the anti-vaxxers promoting the false notion that the current mRNA vaccines are unsafe and the process through which they were brought forward violated safety measures which is patently false.

He wrote for the Brownstone Institute a report published on November 16, 2022, stating, “The Biden plan enshrines former president Donald Trump‘s Operation Warp Speed as the model response to the next century of pandemics. Left unsaid is that, for the new pandemic plan to work as envisioned, it will require us to conduct dangerous gain-of-function research. It will also require cutting corners in the evaluation of the safety and efficacy of novel vaccines. And while the studies are underway, politicians will face tremendous pressure to impose draconian lockdowns to keep the population ‘safe’.”

Scott Atlas blurted out the real purpose of the conference. Reading a prepared statement, he said that the lockdowns failed to stop the dying, and they failed to stop the spread. He blamed the economic lockdowns for the excess deaths rather than the virus. He blamed Dr. Anthony Fauci for implementing the lockdowns and not enforcing “targeted protection.”

Atlas later also called for complete US divestment from the World Health Organization and called for the termination of all middle-level scientists at the CDC, for which he received applause from his colleagues on the panel.

The Stanford conference was entirely divorced from the actual history of the pandemic, particularly its early weeks. The initial outbreak of COVID in Wuhan showed it was propagated by airborne transmission and was both highly contagious and lethal.

When, on January 30, 2020, the WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, Europe, the US, and other countries chose not to act. They could have rapidly eliminated and eradicated the virus but did nothing until the virus had spread globally and began its deadly rampage.

It was in early March, six weeks later, with the horrific scenes emerging out of Italy that prompted the working class to demand a shutdown. Auto workers took the lead in many countries, including the United States and Canada, and it was only out of fear of a mass rebellion among workers internationally that the ruling elites were forced to respond with limited lockdowns to stem the tide of infections.

The Great Barrington Declaration, the right-wing campaigns against mask and vaccine mandates and last month’s conference at Stanford were essentially rooted in fear of the independent initiative of workers insisting on serious in public health measures. The populist demagogy about allowing people the “freedom” to work in the midst of a deadly pandemic cannot disguise what is a fundamentally anti-working class perspective.

The maliciously false point being driven home by the organizers of the conference was that social interventions—masking, closure of schools and businesses, lockdowns, and maintaining social distancing—were worse than the disease, despite studies that have shown when such policies were actually implemented, they saved many, many lives.

As one 2023 study published in The Lancet found, in the period from January 1, 2020, to July 31, 2022, Hawaii, with stricter anti-COVID measures, saw 147 deaths per 100,000 compared to 581 per 100,000 in Arizona and 526 per 100,000 in Washington D.C. The national rate was 372 deaths per 100,000.

Similar conclusions were reached in a more recent comprehensive study that evaluated state by state in the US comparing restrictions in place and impact on excess deaths. As the authors of that study noted, “COVID-19 restrictions were associated with substantial reductions in excess pandemic deaths in the US. If all states had weak restrictions, as defined in the Methods section, estimated excess deaths from July 2020 to June 2022 would have been 25 percent to 48 percent higher than if all had imposed strong restrictions. Behavioral responses provided a potentially important mechanism for this, being associated with 49 percent 78 percent of the overall difference.” This last part of the statement underscores the importance of open channels of communications and an all-in approach to such matters. Public health is first and foremost a social concern.

And still another study published in January 2022 found that the impact of the limited measures employed saved between 870,000 to 1.7 million Americans.

The most insidious issue that the COVID-19 contrarians fail to mention is that herd immunity is not achievable with a virus like SARS-CoV-2, which mutates so rapidly, and the issues raised by Long COVID and reinfections with the concomitant long-term health impacts that will debilitate the population are not even considered. Current estimates place the number of those suffering from Long COVID across the globe at over 410 million as of the end of 2023.

The response to pandemics requires a social investment in public health on an international scale. The global nature of the economy poses that a national approach as was seen in China and its Zero COVID policy cannot withstand an anti-public health policy that is imposed on the global population. This raises the need for a socialist perspective not only to the global economy but to the global health of the working class.

[jackiebrackettt]

hi everyone i watched all the (minecraft) tazercraft shorts at once at 4am and i decided to make graphs about it

they have a recurring theme? i suppose? that i'm calling the "always save your-" series because that's along the lines of what a lot of them are titled (also note that none of them have any speaking it's just various songs playing)

these were like. very surreal to me in my sleep deprived state but basically the concept is: they are both digging down and then one of them finds diamonds and either one of them makes the other move so They can get the diamonds (thus dying/almost dying to the lava) or someone else shows up (for eg: cat in below images) that they have to save which means they doom the other to the lava. or. idk there's so many variations hence the graphs

graphs and stuff below the cut:

graphs 1 and 2 are fairly self-explanatory i think. usually everyone lives, and it's interesting to me that pac is the one saving mike more often than mike saves pac. counting the time both of them saved someone, mike has saved other people the same amount that he's saved pac whereas pac is mostly only shown to save mike. no one else apart from them (unless it's everyone in the scene that one time) dies

offscreen death vs onscreen death (graph 3) is interesting to me because a lot of the times when they're saving someone else the other person just fucking dies. they don't even show it. sometimes you see a bit of their dead body float into screen the way minecraft bodies fall to the side when they die but sometimes they're just gone. i know it's only 3 times but i can't remember the exact numbers for that and can't be bothered to check

NOW post-death (4) is interesting to me because jesus christ. why did they do that. not good for my sleep-deprived mind. two of the times mike dies they show a post-death scene where pac is mourning him. both times it seems like he's very unable to move on from the death because they give him grey hair nd stuff implying he's grown old. the second time he actually builds a house + grave around where mike died in the cavern and just. stays there forever i guess

MIKE however in the one post-death scene he gets builds a grave + laboratory around where pac died and invents time travel to save him. interesting! i feel like you could tie this into their qsmp characterisation somehow but that's a diff post

and just some sillier ones. (graph 5) they often have like… i don't know what the games are but those horror kids games or whatever. poppy's playtime you know. show up in these videos as well as like… things to be saved from? so it's not all lava that's killing/almost killing them. also (graph 6) herobrine shows up a little bit which i mostly categorised because of their whole past series with herobrine and whatnot. most of the time he is just there in the background some times he does stuff

this is just one of their series and maybe i'll make more graphs categorising the others. i mostly just made these for funsies for myself because i like graphs but eh sharing because who knows maybe other people will be interested. their shorts mostly all seem like tiktok trends btw and types of videos repeat a lot ^ like the one here with a little variation each time

[yours-the-author]

Hey, so...

Does anyone remember this post I made recently?

.

.

.

I made some art for it...

If you wanna see it...

Here it is:

I'M SO MAD AT MYSELF IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SURVIVING THE MANSION BUT I DIDN'T REALIZE UNTIL AFTER I FINISHED IT AAAGGH

...Aside from that little oopsie, though, I'm actually really proud of how the logo came out? I based the font off a style called "Micro 5 Charted". Thank goodness I was using graph paper!

I'm not sure if that Kanji is correct; Google Translate doesn't seem to like the word "oni" or "stick", especially together, so I spelled out the Romanji in the English box and then tried to copy the characters Google offered me as closely as possible. I think I'd be more surprised if I got the Kanji correct, honestly.

Henry Stickmin title screens usually have two different fonts for the verb and the noun, and I thought about trying to make "Mansion" look like an actual house, but that made my brain hurt to much to conceptualize, so I stuck with different colored fonts. Hmm, that clock sure is there. I wonder what it means gets hit by a bus

-----

Anyway, here's some theoretical scenarios of what the main gameplay would look like! This one stars General Hubert Galeforce and some other guy:

Option 1: Shoot

Result: The monster hears you move as soon as you pull your gun from its holster. No time to defend yourself.

FAILURE (DiE!)

Option 2: Backup

Result: Your radio refuses to work, even though it was just fine before you entered the mansion. The monster waits until you've realized this, then goes for your throat.

FAILURE (No one will hear your screams...)

Option 3: Time Out

Result: The monster does not hear you and goes into a separate room, out of sight and out of mind. Galeforce survives... for now. But what was that thing...?

-----

I don't know how feasible it would be, but I imagine this would be a cross between typical RPG Maker-styled games (pixels, speech boxes with pictures of the characters, moving around a set floor plan, puzzle solving, etc) and typical Henry Stickmin-styled game play (cutscenes, choices, possible interactivity [grabbing items/bios], the occasional quick time event, etc) (voice acting would be a stretch). Most of the gameplay, like exploring the mansion, puzzle solving, and running/fighting the monster, would be RPG style, and then occasionally switch into a cutscene that requires you to make a choice; usually with just one correct answer but possibly others that could result in diverging dialogue/interaction/paths/endings? Something to think about.

Anyway, Galeforce! Poor man has no idea what he almost walked into, haha. I experimented with perspective and limb placement here, which was exhausting but also a lot of fun! Dynamics are hard with stick figures, but considering that they're they only character medium I've ever been decent at, I made it work.

And the Oni... I tried to give it some sort of anatomy, but quickly realized that I do not have the skills to pay those bills. I opted for a more of a shadowy figure looking thing with a big smile instead (you can see some of the lines where I tried to make it have arms, I think). I opted for Ao Oni's purple-y blue color scheme verses HetaOni's gray alien look. Back in the day of fan made Ao Oni games, people would usually try to put their own unique spin on the Oni sprite, with HetaOni's being the most unique I ever saw (keep in mind, it was one of the few designs I ever saw, so there might be cooler ones out there, who knows). In theory, a game called Sutikku Oni would use a stick figure shaped monster, but with my current art skills, that would just look like a normal stick person with a big head (look! Geoffrey Plumb's cousin!). I think the less we see, the better; all good horror games know when to leave things to the imagination!

-----

I also made a second one, featuring my boy Dave Panpa!

...Dave, I'm so sorry... *MAKES HIM PEEP THE HORROR*

Option 1: Call for Help

Result: You call for help...

FAILURE (...but nobody came.)

Option 2: Run

Result: You tense your muscles in preparation to run. The monster is faster.

FAILURE (YoU... wOn'T... eScApE...!)

Option 3: Pretend to be a Piano

Result: Frozen with fear in front of the piano, it's all you can do to hope the monster thinks you're also a piano (a sopping wet piano, but still). It's deadly quiet. You can hardly breathe, and you're afraid to. The monster stares at you for an uncomfortably long time, before walking away, out of sight and out of mind. You stay still a little longer before collapsing to the ground. Dave Panpa survives... for now. How on Earth did that work? Or... did that thing let you live out of pity...?

-----

UGH the piano! Pianos are so hard to draw! Luckily, I had an almost head on reference that I was able to use for the first picture. For the above view shot, I had to do some wild guessing. The red stuff near Dave's head in the second picture is the red stuff he was referring to. Is it blood? Paint? Something else? Who knows! But as we all know, any self respecting Ao Oni fan game needs a piano puzzle!

I imagine Dave was dragged along for the ride when the Toppats decided to find the treasure of the mansion (or something to that degree), fully intending to leave him there to die if there was, in fact, a monster inside. Poor Dave... Maybe there could be an ending where amends are made? Or maybe not...

I mostly put the smile on the monster's shadow as a means of showing that, indeed, it is the monster, but now I'm wondering if the monster's mouth glows or something? Hot fires of Hell, delivered right to you! Can you beat the heat?

-----

Thank you all for coming to my fixation ramble that absolutely no one else except me finds interesting! Any thoughts before you go?

(A cricket chirps, then leaves because it's in the wrong conference room)

...Yeah, I figured.

[doubleddenden]

Had a thought about Pokemon for the first time in a while. DD's theory corner time:

Legends Arceus- Arceus is in the title, basically the kick to get the plot ball rolling, our ultimate goal

Legends Z-A, if we were to try basing it on the one title before it, probably references Zygarde. Makes sense if we compare the Z to XY- except the A.

Theory: Legends "2" has two title legendaries associated with it. The A is a new Norse inspired Pokemon that represents some new aspect of dimensions (like the X, Y, and Z planes of a graph that formulate latitude, longitude, and the spaces between).

I know I'm not the first to speculate this, but I think I do want to speculate exactly what the A could be. A certainly doesn't fit in with the XYZ planes (or at the least, nothing is really turning up on Google). HOWEVER, the Norse angle does have a hit we could try to wrestle with.

Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde all represent various aspects of the specific Norse iteration of the World Tree mythos (the reason it's so popular world wide is because- much like the world turtle- mythos for world trees exist all around the world)- in this case, Yggdrasil.

Xerneas is the embodiment of life, and embodies aspects of the tree itself, plus seems to be based off of the 4 stags that eat at the branches of the tree. Their names are Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór- no, I don't know how to pronounce those either, but basically as they eat at the branches, the life dew that forms on their antlers flows downwards to create rivers of the world. That's how we get to Xerneas being the tree, the stags, and life itself.

Yveltal is death, and possibly based on an "unnamed eagle" that sits atop the World Tree- aka the Y axis- Or it could possibly be the hawk called Veðrfölnir that sits between the eyes of the unnamed eagle. These birds are attested to be a source of knowledge and possibly are based off of Odin's ravens, which fly off and return with new knowledge. Hawks, Eagles, and Ravens are all birds associated with death to some degree, whether killing prey itself or scavenging dead corpses. That could be how we get a death bird that opposes a life deer

Zygarde is most likely based on the Nidhogg, a dragon that feasts on the roots of Yggdrasil and in particular seems to actually be a villain in early stories. The Nidhogg apparently nibbled and ate corpses of those who lost honor, particularly those guilty of adultery, murder, and oathbreaking. In this case, the fact that Zygarde watches the ecosystem could be a simple role reversal to what Yveltal was supposed to be, and could even embody various aspects of Norse pantheon itself.

Now there is one more prominent creature that could be worked with- Ratatosk- which is a squirrel like creature that communicates messages between the unnamed eagle and Nidhogg, and basically was sort of a chatty gossip that seemed to start shit on purpose, basically harassing the fauna of the tree and continuing the fued between Eagle and Nidhogg. This could already be incorporated into Zygarde's cell system, as the cells communicate with each other across the world- but seem to exist to SOLVE problems instead.

Still, as we've seen from the above, Game Freak isn't afraid to remix or twist ideas to make their own. So I'm gonna say Ratatosk has a strong chance of being legendary A, in this case. Something to note is that it may not be 100% a squirrel in this case, much like how Zygarde is a snake and a dragon, but it's still something that can be meddled with.

Now the question would be: what does A bring to the table that Life, Death, and Order does not?

Before that, let's ask WHY there'd be a Legendary A. Xerneas and Yveltal, by nature, are beings that go into long slumber once they've done their jobs- according to XY, that would have been about 3k years before the start of the story, where Yveltal drained the life of everyone and thing around it before turning into a cocoon, and/or Xerneas becoming a tree that granted life instead.

GF can do whatever they want, but there's something else to note: if ZA takes place ENTIRELY within Lumiose, that means we're not going to Geosenge where the cocoon or tree were to power the cannon Lysander almost destroyed the world with. Now they'll probably bring them back anyway, but if they'd play as big of a role as Zygarde, why not call the game XYZ like the anime?

Hence A. Pokemon loves legendary duos, and so A could potentially be the opposite of Zygarde. In other words: CHAOS, the opposite of order.

This could fit imo, given that Ratatosk loved to start shit. Not to mention, A is opposite to Z in the alphabet- certainly would explain why it pops up against the established XYZ.

Of course, you can't talk about Norse mythology in the modern Era without bringing up Thor or Loki. While Thor has yet to be represented imo (and hey, who is to say all we get is A in this case for a new legendary), Loki is probably one of the most well known people from this mythos. And, again, given that we've established that GF isn't afraid to mix things around, I personally think A will be a mix of Loki and Ratatosk.

In other words, a trickster that THRIVES on starting shit.

While it's initial basis for Ratatosk is a squirrel, Loki was a shapeshifter that took on various forms, including the infamous horse that would give birth (yes Loki got pregnant and gave birth) to the 8 legged horse, Sleipnir. Loki also took forms of creatures such as a fly, a salmon, and even an elderly woman.

Now picture this: doesn't this sound like something that could be used for traversal? A salmon or fish form for surfing, a fly or flying insect form for gliding or flying, a horse for faster traversal- if we throw in the squirrel, that could easily climb things, and the elderly woman could easily be worked in either as a villain, npc, or even integrated into a final form akin to Zygarde's 100% form.

So does the Pokemon transform? Does it work like Zygarde and have bits and pieces to collect? If it's Chaos, why would it help us?

That I'm unsure of. It may not even happen- but we do need a reason as to why suddenly Zygarde is okay with humans rebuilding Lumiose. And again, it could simply be trying to start shit, perhaps helping us retake a Lumiose reclaimed by nature as a way to simply piss off Zygarde. Of course, it could also be the enemy that took over Lumiose to begin with, or it could simply be a generic friend Pokemon, who knows.

It could even be that those forms mentioned earlier could be taken separately as new forms or special Pokemon akin to the likes of Wyrdeer or Kleavor. Or not at all of course.

We won't know jack until we get an actual trailer for the game itself, but I think that the red tinge in the title art could indicate something. Unclear what.

If I were to think of a name... Aosk? Like Chaos and Ratatosk. And the animal? A rat. On the nose, but snakes eat rats, and Zygarde is a snake. Duality, bitches.

We can probably assume AZ will be here since he's cursed with immortality, and we can't ignore the fact that Z-A is AZ backwards. So whatever it is, legendary A might have something to do with him as well.

In fact, now that I think about it, that red tinge does match the color of the canon... what if this was a Pokemon directly created as a result of the canon?

Anyway that's all my rambling.

[olderthannetfic]

There's this specific genre of informational post that drives me up the wall and over. It's basically a collage which may or may not be connected together always with a caption that's either off kilter to what's presented or simply reductive. It would be a collage of a screenie of an article then, for some reason, a google search of article titles then a stat graph of some sort, then whatever social post. What am I suppose to do with an infodump in visual form? It almost feels like filler. You see it everywhere in whatever argument on the internet. It's especially jarring to see people bust it out during a ship war because that is exactly the tone we were arguing in with our long paragraphed metas.

--

[quidcumque]

GRAVEYARD KEEPER: FIRST THOUGHTS

I heard it compared to Stardew Valley and aside from the silly title screen, it's definitely visually there. Play through? There are a hell of a lot of cons, but they won't keep me from playing it

Con: no character customization, no choices at all. You ARE a heterosexual white male-presenting protagonist with a female-presenting white sweetheart. Any headcannon re either of you being 🏳️‍⚧️ remains headcannon

Hilarious: you are reading a text from your sweetheart when crossing a road and you get hit by a car. Keep track of your surroundings, kids

Con: the dialog writing starts out real clumsy. You do eventually get choices, but I prefer how SV makes you the strong silent type when you're not actively involved

WHICH REMINDS ME, CON: don't let the dialog bubbles cycle on their own without me clicking??? I missed so much unretrievable info because I was mulling over the first half smh

Plot: she swallowed the dog to catch the cat, she swallowed the cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider, she swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I don't know why she swallowed the fly, maybe she died crossing the street and woke up in a shitty little medieval FLAT EARTHER village and she has to rube goldburg her way to and through a magic portal to get back to her sweetheart. Or something.

Pro: I don't play rpgs much so while I don't prefer this style over sv's do-whatever-and-you'll-suck-less-as-you-go gameplay, it's pretty awesome in and off itself BECAUSE it's so different. It also contributes heavily to the swallowed-the-spider-to-catch-the-fly effect because it's got EIGHT TABS OF TECH TREES and I started drawing graphs

Pro: you're on a derelict homestead/graveyard with a familiar need to clear rocks/trees/stuff and bring the area back to life. BUT doing things gives you different xp/knowledge points which is how you advance on the tech trees, so it's different from just a carbon copy SV feel

Con: Jesús Christ you can tell this was made by a dude. So was SV, but where it had nearly equal gender ratios (plus the aforementioned character choices), I've seen... not very many women thus far, and what we get is not exactly impressive. I have no problems with "ms charm" telling me to fuck off until I deserved to talk to her, as half the men I met said the same. But I've met two wives thus far, and uhhhhhhhhhhh one is straight up called sweet but stupid in her bio and the other opens EVERY SINGLE DIALOG with "you should talk to my husband, he's in charge" like jfc lady you're the one I need for recipes, calm down? Does he beat you? What the hell?

Con: let's set aside that I'm pretty sure the "medieval idiots thought world flat" thing has been debunked, because I found info but it didn't have good citations. Also maybe we're going for parody over historically accurate, fine whatever. But whyyyyyyyyyy do you have a guy named "G*psy Traveler" like I know I have an inflated sense of how widely it's known that that's a slur, but it on top of the flat earth thing and the WOW that's bad female-or-anything representation, it builds an image of the creator/creators as the really stereotypical basement dwelling head-up-ass dudes who have never ever looked outside their zone and never ever want to

Pro: like two steps into the tutorial you're slapped in the face with Soilent Green is People and you just live with that

Hilarious: I can tell when I have a first conversation with somebody I was supposed to have met already, because my pre-scripted side of the conversation suddenly backslides in terms of my acceptance of the situation

Pro: time is an illusion and represented only by the cycle of emoji-labeled days. Weeks are not counted, so I legitimately have no clue how many "weeks" I went through last night

Unsure??? I don't know how much I'm going to have to drink the church koolaid to progress? I saw an indication up the tech tree that suggested my good/evil choices MIGHT matter, but I've got no idea how. I told the inquisitor who'd just BURNED A PEOPLE ALIVE IN FRONT OF ME that sure I'd be his friend, and I don't know if the game allows for that to have been a choice made out of the fear that I'd be burned next if I said no

Pro: I still want to play it. The myriad cons will influence how I talk about it to my friends, but it's still giving me dopamine, and that's good enough

[docluna]

Ch. 2: The Offer

The elevator doors opened after what Luna felt was a suspiciously long travel time for four floors downward. The room within, at first, seemed to be a narrow but long office with dim lighting in place. Its floor was marble tile, so well polished that it might as well have been mirrored. The lights on the ceiling, turned down though they were, gave off a warmth that was almost reassuring after the florescent buzzing of the elevator.

At the other end of the room stood a cheri wood desk, expertly engraved with patterns that were clearly inspired by the flowing lines of Kanto’s only native dragon-type Pokemon family. A grid of nine monitors lit up the wall, showing graphs and talking heads and lists of prices that were well outside of the doctor’s understanding. And silhouetted by those screens, a haze of cigarette smoke rising from his right hand, sat a man that could only be Giovanni.

He reached forward, and the screens flicked into darkness as one. As they did, and the lights came up over the desk, he turned around to face the elevator door. Even seated, he cut an imposing figure. He wore a perfectly tailored black suit and tie over a spotless white shirt, which did little to disguise his muscular build. His short coal-black hair was slicked back and trimmed to precision, and though he smiled, his sharp features and stormy-gray eyes felt no less intimidating for it.

“You must be Doctor Wenhouse.” He said, waving her closer. “Please, come and sit. I’ve been eager to meet you.”

The deep sound of his voice snapped Luna back to the moment, and she realized she’d been holding her breath. She forced herself to start breathing again, offering a shaky smile in return, and made her way across the tile. “Thank you. Mister Giovanni, right?”

He chuckled. “No need for the formality, Doctor, especially not with my first name. Just Giovanni will be fine. Do you smoke?”

Luna pulled another chair around from beside the desk, shaking her head as she sat down. “No, never have. And since we’re foregoing titles, call me Luna.”

Giovanni nodded, then stamped out the cigarette in an ashtray built into the desk. “Wise of you, Luna. I shouldn’t, myself, but I do anyway. I suppose we all have our vices. I hope your trip was smooth?”

“It was, yeah. Honestly, I haven’t ridden the inter-regional magnet line in a year or so, but it’s always been a nice time.” Luna replied. She looked down at her hands, took a deep breath, then returned her gaze to his. That steely gaze was so focused, she felt like he could see right through her, and it set her nerves sliding toward the anxiety she’d been so desperately trying to avoid. “Listen, I appreciate the politeness, but can you please explain what’s going on? I feel like I stumbled into some kind of spy thriller or sci-fi film.”

“Mm. I can understand that. To business then.” Giovanni crossed his hands on the desk, leaning forward. “Your thesis document was quite an impressive work, though I admit I only understand enough to scratch the surface. Human and Pokemon DNA compatibility is an underappreciated field of study, and ties quite closely to something of a personal project I’ve long had an interest in seeing through.”

The man sighed, shaking his head and clenching one hand into a fist. “Unfortunately, as I believe you learned, those who research this kind of thing are shunned and insulted at best. Don’t think I didn’t see the remarks that were made about you, while I was doing my research. Since I have no interest in seeing my project assailed by the same short-sighted morons, and I’m storing some very valuable artifacts and equipment here, the utmost secrecy was necessary.”

Luna grimaced, teeth grinding at the memories. If it hadn’t been people calling her a pervert, assuming her research was in the interest of cross-species breeding, it was people calling her a psychopath who wanted to create abominations. Even those she considered otherwise level-headed seemed to believe the theories on gene therapy and beneficial sequence splicing she proposed were simply steps on the path to one outrage or another. It was hard not to recall having to deal with anonymous threats from supposed moral crusaders, some far more graphic than others. “In that case,” she began, voice shaking a bit. A pause. She swallowed the lump in her throat, and nodded to him. “In that case, I think I kind of get it.”

Giovanni frowned, leaning back slightly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to distress you. I should have known that this topic might. Do you need a moment?”

Luna shook her head firmly, focusing on his face again. Cast against the people she’d clashed with so frequently while working on her thesis, his fair skin and dramatic features somehow seemed less severe than before.

The man breathed a relieved sigh, then reached into one of his desk drawers and produced a thick unmarked manila envelope. With a glint in his eye, he slid it across the desk to her. “Good. Let me cut to the chase, then. To make sure you understand how serious I am, let me begin with compensation and work backwards. I am prepared to offer you a salary of twenty million dollars, room and board, and an unlimited equipment and resource fund subject to approval. The details are in this envelope, as well as the unsigned contract forms.”

Luna couldn’t stop herself from gasping, staring at Giovanni wide-eyed. The salary was more than enough for her to live comfortably on its face. Room and board? An equipment and resource fund with no cap? This had to be some kind of prank. She watched his eyes, sure that at any second he’d burst into laughter. But the laughter never came. He simply smirked, as though he was satisfied by the moment for some other reason.

“Supposing you find those terms agreeable enough to go on for now,” he said, pulling a pen from his coat pocket, “and you go ahead and sign the non-disclosure agreements within, I’ll be happy to explain just what is worth so much to me. Once you know the details, we may renegotiate any aspect of the compensation package you wish to address.”

Luna looked down at the envelope as he placed the pen beside it. Impossible as it seemed, the man was somehow serious. Words failing her, she opened the envelope and pulled out the small stack of papers it held, scanning the contract that sat on top.

Finally, she looked up and met his eyes again. “Could I show this to a lawyer? No offense, this is just hard to believe.”

“Naturally.” Giovanni nodded once. “In your position, I doubt I would do any differently. I just ask that you keep in mind the secrecy I’ve worked so hard on. If they ask where you got the contract, it would be preferential if you told them as little as possible. Information is a hot commodity in Saffron City, and it grows more valuable the more notable the subjects involved. It would pain me greatly to have this place’s privacy ruined by the wrong word to the wrong person.”

The doctor nodded mutely, sliding the contract back into the envelope. In the moment, with her thoughts already trying to pull her focus in too many directions at once, she simply had no room to spare to decide if this too made sense or raised a red flag. Instead, she turned what remained of her focus to the NDA that appeared next in the stack.

She’d signed dozens of these in the past. This was far more expansive than she was used to, but it was at least familiar. The single page that declared nearly everything about the project, including its location and the names of the people involved, to be a protected secret. She signed it without a second thought, slid it to him, and crossed her arms in an attempt to steady herself. The rest of the papers loomed, but she ignored them, pushing the whirlwind of concerns down in her head to focus on the question at hand. “Okay. You said details after I signed that. Let’s talk details.”

Giovanni nodded, placing the paper back into the desk drawer it came from. He drew himself up in his seat, then stood, smoothing his suit with one hand. “Let’s talk details, indeed. Let me show you the key to all of this, the most valuable object I, or perhaps anyone, has ever owned.”

Luna’s brow furrowed as she stood, arms tight against her. “That’s a pretty bold claim.”

“It is,” Giovanni said, walking toward the left third of the room. As he walked, lights came up around a glass-covered display that sat prominently in his path. “But I think you’ll agree, once you understand.”

Luna followed him with hesitant steps, though once the lights came up her stride became more purposeful. While Giovanni walked around to the other side of the case, she gazed down upon its contents and frowned deeply at the categorization label of No. 150 next to them. Instantly, all of the chaotic thoughts in her head vanished in favor of one simple truth.

“No offense, Giovanni, but you must have been scammed.” She offered, after a moment of contemplation. “This has to be a fake, just like every other one that’s supposedly been found. I’m sure it’s a very convincing one, though.” “Mm. None taken.” Giovanni said, placing his hand in his pocket with a knowing smile. “I would say the same thing, if our positions were reversed. Would you like to see what I had extracted, on my dime, by someone I trust, from this sample?” Luna lifted her gaze from the single strand of bright pink hair, suspended in its vacuum prison. It simply couldn’t be possible that this was anything more than a ruse. No legitimate sample of anything from the mythical species 150 had been found, ever, and it would’ve been international news if one had. It was only in the last fifty years that the scientific community had even begun to consider its existence as anything more than another legend, after photographic evidence of it was finally published, and even that was still met with intense skepticism.

Still, the idea that it might be real tugged at the part of her brain that wanted so badly to believe. Against her better judgment, she sighed and nodded. “Fine. Hit me.”

Giovanni pressed a button hidden on the case’s metal support, and the glass top went opaque save for the view of the sample itself. A second passed, and the display lit up with a document that nearly stopped the doctor’s breathing.

The name at the top alone would’ve been enough to give her goosebumps. The legendary Doctor Philip Fuji himself, the enigmatic master of the remote Cinnabar Island Research Lab, had signed off on this. Certainly, it could be faked, but the way the report was written was a perfect mirror of the many papers she’d spent sleepless nights thumbing through. To complicate matters further, the report was co-authored by the fiery scientist and leader of the Cinnabar Island Gym, Roger Blaine. She scanned through the report wordlessly, scarcely remembering to breathe. Genetic code of unthinkable complexity, on the order of eight separate strands at least. While it was somewhat damaged, sampling intact sequences created 100% base matches in over half of known species just from one week of computerized searching. Perhaps most alarming, more than any other Pokemon, the DNA racked up matches for human sequences in spades. The pair differed on the practical applications of the discovery, Blaine considering the potential of the DNA as a blueprint for understanding the propagation of different abilities while Fuji candidly stated that it may have extensive use in the field of medicine. The one thing they both agreed upon, in the end, was that the sample was legitimate.

The report ended with an appeal to Giovanni, their client and apparent friend. The sample should stay hidden, the research unpublished. The scientific community would fall upon it in a frenzy, they argued, and more sinister minds than theirs would inevitably find a darker purpose for it. Whatever else he chose to do with it, they insisted, it should be his choice. Especially, Blaine added, as Giovanni had just announced his retirement from the public life of the Viridian City Gym.

“Holy shit.” Luna breathed, lifting her head for the first time in fifteen minutes. Giovanni was watching her with an amused smirk, seemingly unbothered by the wait. She cleared her throat, standing up fully again. “Giovanni, this is impossible.”

“You know,” he said, glancing down at the report himself, “Phil said the same thing, back then. Roger’s cursing about it was, we’ll say, inventive. If you still doubted my need for secrecy before, surely you understand it fully now.”

“Yeah. Fuck, yeah, I do.” Luna said. She thought for a moment more, then focused on his eyes again. “Okay. So. You’ve got a real sample of 150. As real as they get. What’s this got to do with me?”

“In other words, the job itself. As you saw, the sample is corroded.” Giovanni said, placing a hand on the displayed report. “As it is now, any real application of it would be difficult, at best. You are going to analyze it yourself, using the equipment I will provide you. You are going to be given access to a war chest that I have been building for twenty years for this very purpose. And using the splicing techniques you theorized about, you will take human and Pokemon DNA and repair the damage into a viable sample for cloning. And then.” Giovanni’s hand closed, and he inhaled deeply. Luna’s head swam from the implications of what she was hearing, but she hung on every word.

“And then, alongside one of the most brilliant technicians living today, you will change the world.”

[moonfurthetemmie]

I’m Out Of Funky Titles For the Crossover of DS Verses (Part 8)

I couldn’t write a whole lot for the scenarios I had, so I put them all together. 

Previous | Next

“…I suppose that answers one of your questions,” Blue mumbled.

The new Dream’s expression didn’t change much. Blue was starting to learn that he just didn’t emote. It was unnerving, even after him staying with Blue these past few days.

The new Dream, who had taken the nickname ‘Delusion’ for now, was listening intently to the remainder of the JR announcement of the… other Meme Squad. Even the censored blood from the security footage made Blue queasy. He really hoped he didn’t run into them.

“I suppose it does,” Delusion mused. “The three of them…It’s not like them to risk something like that. I suspect they appeared there much the way I appeared in that park, and didn’t see any way to just sneak out.” He tapped his chin. “They wouldn’t have been able to get nearly that far in our multiverse, though…Perhaps this JR has less security.”

“W-well…our Meme Squad aren’t murderers,” Blue said. “They- The guards don’t really have to worry about being killed when they break in. They would’ve been…pretty unprepared.”

Delusion hummed, but said nothing.

Blue handed him the remote. “I’m…I’m going to go lay down. I don’t want to hear any more.” He was only feeling more and more sick the more he watched.

Delusion’s expression softened ever so slightly. “Alright. Would you like me to lower the volume some?”

“That would be...much appreciated,” Blue mumbled. “Thank you.”

Delusion turned his attention to the announcement. Perhaps he should pay this JR a visit sooner than he’d intended…They may need his help tracking down his Meme Squad. He was still worried about Blue, though. He was still awful anxious; what was he afraid of? Perhaps an ex-lover was stalking him? Paranoid that someone was out to get him? Or just nervous to be in Delusion’s presence? Whatever the case, Delusion was sure he could assist, though it would be very difficult to do so if he left.

If the problem was simply shyness, it would be alright to leave him alone, but Delusion wasn’t sure that Blue would tell him the truth. He’d lied about staying with a sister, Delusion had no guarantee he wouldn’t lie about a dangerous stalker or what have you. He was probably afraid to be honest.

Delusion felt bad for him. But he really should go visit his alternate…Maybe he should take Blue with him. When Blue wasn’t feeling so sick, at least.

~~

“We need to figure out where they could be hiding,” Dream said. “They can’t escape to their multiverse to hide-“

“Which only leaves us with the entirety of this multiverse,” one of the monsters at the table said dryly. A small owl-like woman that had to sit on a stack of books to see over the table. “Shouldn’t take too long.”

Dream sighed. “Yes. Thank you, Peggy.” He turned on the projector and brought up a map of the multiverse.

‘Map’ was a very generous term for the thing; it was impossible to map realms with no physical distance or barriers between them, so it was more a graph of many known universes. Large circles for particularly important ones (such as the AU JR’s headquarters is in, or the universe that is theorized to have been the very first one in the multiverse, and the ‘first’ of several other genres of AUs…), and small circles for minor timelines or universes that had at least something of interest—mainly AUs that the Meme Squad was known to frequent, or hide out in. There were notes denoting whether a universe was particularly positive or negative, and anything else that JR decided was of interest to them.

“Sparrow, what can you tell us about the places the Horror Squad tend to hide in?”

Sparrow, the new Finch, folded his arms and studied the map. “Not much,” he admitted. “So far as we’ve been able to discern, there’s no real pattern. When it was only Pluto, he’d switch between hiding in positive AUs and negative AUs at random intervals. But since he was joined by Slash and Byte, we’ve been finding hideouts a lot less, and there seems to be even less pattern to that when we can find one.”

“I’m willing to bet they’ve got a more permanent place in the middle of nowhere, so they can’t be spotted or tracked,” one of the other humans said. “We’ve suspected the Meme Squad’s got a place like that for a while, now. It would be the safest way to hide, and explain why we haven’t found any kind of hideout in years.”

Sparrow slowly nodded. “That would be smart. They can’t do that now, though. They could try to go to the Meme Squad’s house, but given what I’ve heard of them, and the whole destiny bond thing, they may be willing to risk calling for help from JR if the ones from my multiverse broke in, and there’s been nothing”

“So the Horror Squad may go back to Pluto’s old method?” the human said.

“That’d be my guess, but I don’t know where they’d start,” Sparrow admitted.

Dream rubbed his chin, and looked over the map. “���Well. It’s the best idea we have. Now…”

~~

Ink was woken from her sleep by a searing pain in her side, and an annoyed voice saying, “If this doesn’t wake you up I’m going to start cutting fingers off.”

She yelled out in pain and jolted away, only to fall on her side, the chair she was sitting on banging against the floor with her.

“Good morning.” The voice said with false cheerfulness. “Christ, you’ve been out for ages. I didn’t hit you that hard.”

Ink’s vision was blurred from pain and sleep, but she recognized that voice. She also recognized the feel of a rough fiber rope binding her arms and legs to the chair.

“Wh…what the hell,” she gasped. “What did you fucking stab me with?”

Her chair was pulled upright, and she was turned to face her alternate. She’d taken off her jacket, revealing a black tank-top, and identical tattoos to the ones Ink had on her arms. She had one hand on her hip, and in the other was holding a rod of metal. One end was glowing bright red. She looked deeply unimpressed,

“I didn’t stab you,” she scoffed, walking off and setting it carefully on a metal table. There were…a lot of things on the table. Things that Ink didn’t like the look of. She twisted her hands in their bindings, to no avail. “I poked you. There’s a big difference. We’ll get to the stabbing with hot metal later.”

“….what the fuck.”

Her alternate picked up a pair of blue rubber gloves, pulling them on as she glanced at Ink. “You’re not particularly interesting. You’re pretty boring, actually.” She picked up one of the things on the table, though Ink couldn’t see what exactly. “But I thought, y’know, if I’m going to be stuck in another multiverse, I want to get some fun out of it.” She picked up a small white square—an alcohol wipe?—next, and wiped off whatever she had in her hand. “I can only get my hands on so many people, though. Especially if some of your JR is on their way.”

She turned around, slowly twirling a razor blade between her fingers. The blade was still damp from the rubbing alcohol.

“I don’t have my Dream here to cover me for this stuff, so I have to take some extra to not be found.”

Her eyes gleamed with a strange light as she stepped towards Ink.

“I’ve taken your phone already, and made sure it can’t be tracked.”

Ink’s breathing quickened.

“This shed used to be part of an amusement park, but it looks like it’s been abandoned for years.”

She tried to push herself away. Fighting against the rope around her hands desperately.

“No one will find you.”

She could only manage a few inches, the way her feet were tied to the chair.

“And no one can hear you.”

Her alternate roughly grabbed the chair and held her in place.

“If you bore me now, I’ll cut your throat and leave you to the crows.”

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so fucking scared.

“So you better have a decent pain tolerance, and you better scream.”

The razor came down on her skin.

[rjalker]

Instances of Martha Wells differentiating between "humans" and "augmented humans" and the statistics of why it's done, in books 1-6, and both short stories.

[Plain text: "Instances of Martha Wells differentiating between "humans" and "augmented" humans and the percentages of why it's done in books 1-6, and both short stories.". End plain text.]

There's two pie charts now, one excluding only the instance where the word "Augmented" was used in the phrase "alien-augmented", which is not relevant, and one that excludes instances of Murderbot talking about impersonating an augmented human, which is also not relevant to the issue.

Here's the post that lists out all the instances.

If you're mad about me analyzing these books I like even when it's of Martha Wells doing bigoted shit instead of me just pretending everything is fine, go watch a Marvel movie instead. Or go watch Dora the Explora if you don't want to think about the media you consume in any way.

Chart 1, excluding only the instance of "alien-augmented", including all other instances of the word "augmented" from books 1-6, including both short stories, which did not mention the word at all.

Yes, this did take several hours of my life and I did it for free. You're welcome!

No I'm not going to type out yet another essay about why this is ableist as fuck on this post. go find my other ones. or practice your critical thinking skills.

[ID: An orange, blue, and red pie graph, titled, "Instances of Martha Wells differentiating between Humans and cyborgs (augmented humans) in books 1-6, because..."

The smallest section at 19.4% is orange, and reads, "Murderbot is impersonating a cyborg". This happens 31 times.

The second smallest section, at 24.4%, is blue, and reads, "The information is actually relevant to the situation". This happens 39 times.

The largest section, at 56.3%, is red, and reads, "She's literally just automatically excluding cyborgs, who are disabled people, from the category of human as a matter of course. This is never questioned or commented upon. You are not allowed to forget that cyborgs are not considered humans.". This happens 90 times.

End ID.]

[ID: A red and blue pie chart, titled, "Martha Wells differentiating between humans and cyborgs (augmented humans), excluding instances of Murderbot mentioning impersonating a cyborg, because..."

The smaller section, at 30.2% is blue, and reads, "The information is actually relevant to the situation.". This happens 39 times.

The larger section, at 69.8%, is red, and reads, "She's literally just decided to exclude cyborgs, AKA disabled people, from the category of human. This is not done to question the dehumanization of disabled people. It is not part of the plot at all. You are not supposed to question it. She just saw that it was a popular trope in scifi and decided to adopt it without actually using it the way it's intended -- to show that it's wrong. We're just supposed to accept that cyborgs (disabled people!) aren't human, without question or comment". This happens 90 times.

End ID.]

anyways. It is in fact your responsibility to criticize bigotry, even in series you enjoy.

Martha Wells saw scifi authors having it be part of the plot that cyborgs are seen as subhuman, and decided that was a cool idea, without actually understanding why the trope exists and what it's used for. She is not trying to question the idea that disabled people are less than human, she just thinks it's pretty set dressing that doesn't need to be questioned or confronted or explored.

This is ableism, and shitty, lazy writing, plain and simple.

If you do not want to confront bigotry through your stories, then don't fucking put bigotry in your stories! It's not fucking difficult! Do not just pick fucking tropes from dystopian novels like they're fucking decorations and then not actually put in the effort to confront their existence.

-----

Obligatory signature to ward off bigoted cowards and jackasses who are terrified and infuriated by the idea of admitting a thing they like isn't absolute perfection incarnate:

[ID: A blue banner with a black outline, and white text that reads, "Error-06210311-150606: I'm not interested in in-universe explanations you just pulled out of your ass to defend bigotry on the part of the real life author that you didn't even notice until I pointed it out to you." End ID.]

and don't even get me started on the way she demonized drug addicts and people who can't feel pain.

[sasster]

Hey, Aeivas! You like look into neato powers and stuff, right?

You got anything to dish about the Lefera bloodline?

>It looks like you’ve caught the man in what is supposed to be a private room at the library, which is good news for you! He might otherwise not be able to effectively answer your question.

>Aeivas looks up from the book he was scribbling away in, wonder where he got that from, to meet your gaze.

“Oh, hey small fry. You know I usually charge for this kind of information, but you seem like a guy on a mission.”

>As he speaks he pulls himself up from where he was sitting on the floor to some immaculately organized shelves of books and other such information cataloging devices. It appears that the shelves are organized alphabetically by bloodline and color.

“Leferas are yellow right? The power comes with picture perfect memory, but the more we go digging about — Well. Lines get crossed and blurred and well,

You know the story of what happens when a Saekul blurs his lines.”

>If you think the implication here is the whole Zurven situation, you might be right. He’s just making conversation while he gets you that information you were looking for. He grabs something that looks like a tablet and opens it up to a small holographic info graph for his eyes only.

“Writing it down helps, but god digitizing is so important too. Never forget that.”

>He swipes through tablet as he goes back to sit on the floor with his legs crossed.

“Leferas. Oh they’re fun. Did you know there’s no logical way that their powers manifest? It’s a grab bag!

Maybe an explanation will crop up with the next one.

It’s a fairly new line, as well. Well. New. The fourth troll to be given that specific surname in that bloodline still lives and breathes today.

Well, there’s no record of him dying at least.

Favion Lefera. No title though. Sometimes guys don’t get one. It is what it is.”

>He shrugs his shoulders.

“Who are you asking about, what are you asking about?”

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Robot Monster (Tucker, 1953)

The release of the 2022 Sight and Sound poll has spurred me to start closing off a number of longtime blind spots with respect to classic cinema. I finally made the time to get through Jeanne Dielman... (I'm not writing out the whole title, it's longer than the movie) and Battleship Potemkin, and while at this point I probably appreciated them more than I enjoyed them, the former is certainly growing on me in the days since I've seen them. Both of those I watched on the Criterion Channel, through which I've also been watching a bunch of very good old time screwball comedies. But classics come in all shapes and sizes, and inspired by a recent MST3K-centric episode of The Important Cinema Club podcast and this great review by Letterboxd user sakana1, I decided to finally get around to Phil Tucker's 1953 movie about a robot monster, coincidentally called Robot Monster.

The movie plays like a child's idea of science fiction. The majority of earth's population is killed by a vaguely defined death ray, and the survivors band together as a family unit against the invading robot monster named Ro-Man. We also learn that Ro-Man's entire race is also known as Ro-Mans, and that he's actually Earth Ro-Man, who reports to another Ro-Man known as the Great One through what looks like a bedroom mirror. I don't expect a child to think through their choice of nomenclature, so I will excuse these awkward naming conventions. They're not even called Ro-Men, and we learn of no Ro-Women, but as all boys know, girls have cooties, which must hold for alien races and robot monsters as well. I will not spoil the ending, but it does support this reading.

I had trouble gelling to this at first, because while this is very bad, it betrays an understanding of how real "good" movies should operate. It's the opposite of exciting, but not in a way that suggests it's completely alien to such a concept. Compare this to Manos, another MST3K bad movie classic, and you see how that movie functions more convincingly as outsider art, made by filmmakers so oblivious to the rhythms of normal movies that they invent their own, with every shot framed awkwardly, held a little too long, creaking towards its conclusion like the blips on a heart monitor. Robot Monster only achieves this kind of anti-cinema in the sequences of Ro-Man waddling through the valley, framed so crudely and drawn out so long as to dissipate any tension, while Elmer Bernstein's score booms on the soundtrack. (Bernstein took the gig after being blacklisted.)

When we're stuck with the humans, this movie is regular bad and boring. When we're with Ro-Man and the Great One, this is gold. It helps that Ro-Man's appearance is never scary and indeed rather cuddly and huggable (the movie didn't have enough money for a robot suit, so Tucker hired a friend who owned a gorilla costume). It also helps that after endless, endless scenes of Ro-Man waddling around, mostly in the superior second half, we see Ro-Man's ruthless nature start to thaw, as his love for the last woman on Earth (okay, there's the mother too, but I guess Ro-Man isn't into older women) causes him to question his mission. He confesses to his superior that he wishes to "To be like the hu-man! To laugh! Feel! Want! Why are these things not in the plan?" And push comes to shove, finds himself hesitating to kill. "I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot!" I suppose at this point I was won over enough by the movie's directness that I was a little moved. Maybe at the end of the day, all Ro-Man needed was a hug.

[exilley]

This is damning evidence of the impact corporate monopolies have on the accessibility of necessary goods and services, but I think a lot of people are misconstruing what the data is actually supposed to be. Not going to point fingers or chew anyone out for it, especially because the title is misleading, but it’s important to know how to analyze these things objectively and on their own terms. So, I would like to make clear what exactly it is that we’re looking at.

This line graph isn't depicting the numerical increase of gross market prices of select goods and services in the U.S., rather the proportionate increase in the inflation rate of select goods and services in the U.S. The 0% starting point is a form of continuous numerical data which measures an observed numerical trend, the trend in question being inflation rates.

The math works out like this.

Say the price for a TV in 1997 is $3,500 and the price for insulin during the same year is $2. Over the course of 20 years, the inflation rate of TVs drops by 95% while the inflation rate of insulin skyrockets to 1171% of what it was 20 years previously. You do not multiply 3,500 by (1-.95) and 2 by 11.71 for the predicted price of both products in 2017. These numbers are not only not realistic (that would be just $175 for a TV and only $23.42 for insulin), but the information extrapolated to conduct those calculations aren’t representative of the graph’s statistics. Instead, it's illustrating the rate at which prices increase/decrease over time, in contrast to a specific point in the past. It is not saying that TVs became cheaper than insulin, nor that the price of insulin increased by 11.71x in the span of 20 years.

Now, it might sound like a moot point. This doesn’t change the fact that insulin and other necessary goods and services are unethically priced and gatekept from those who need it most by a bunch of rich assholes. But again, and I cannot stress this point enough: knowing how to interpret graphs and statistics is a crucial skill. It’ll help you avoid misinformation. You’ll gain a more complex understanding of politics and social discourse. You can educate others. You’re less susceptible to fallacious talking points and unreliable claims of scientific credence. Don’t take these things at face value, even if the information presented is in support of your own opinions and perspective.

God the prices of tvs have changed so much let me get my graph