#(after zero-sum game of course)

[doctorweebmd]

good news chapter 12 of the path to paradise is basically done so i need to edit and tweak some things before my night shift tomorrow but hopefully i'll post it then!!!

[janmisali]

Number Tournament: Honorable Mentions

well, you've all asked for it, and I guess there's no point in waiting any further now that round one is almost over. here's some highlights from the numbers that didn't get enough nominations to make it into the tournament. (as you can work out from looking at how many nominations the numbers that made it into the tournament got, my cutoff was seven nominations, which left room for me to hand-pick three numbers that only got six to fill in the bottom seeds)

six nominations

these are the numbers that were the closest of all to making the cut. in the end, I picked ten, Rayo's number, and omega to fill in seeds 62-64, but four other numbers got six nominations but didn't make it:

25: perfectly fine square number. notably funnier than 24

81: another square. I only wanted one "boring normal integer" for the bottom seeds and like come on it had to be ten.

5040: Plato's favorite number, a very fun one

42069: both 420 and 69 already made the cut, so this would have been excessive

and now for some miscellaneous fun ideas that not enough people suggested to make the cut!

cool math things

c (the speed of light) could have been a strong contender, but physics fans were pretty much universally putting their efforts behind the fine-structure constant and the Avogadro constant, leaving other universal constants behind

the Euler-Masceroni constant got five nominations super early on in the process, some of which were even intentional (there are so many things named after Euler but I made the call that people who said "Euler's constant" without specifying were talking about this one) but never got any further than that

a lot of infinite ordinals more interesting than the standard omega were in the running, but given that omega itself only barely made it in, numbers like omega to the omega power never stood a chance. of course, given how well omega did in round one maybe those other bigger infinities could have held their own if only more people suggested them before the tournament began

Not a Number's presence in the tournament is I think very fun, but other floating point things were also nominated, just not as frequently. negative zero was a fun one, as are the handful of nominations for just slightly-off multiples of one tenth

besides star, a lot of game theory not-really-number numbers had a few fans supporting them, such as dud (deathless universal draw), a couple of tiny numbers, and one suggestion for {69|420}

meme numbers

fans of boobs were split between 80085, 58008, 8008135, and 5318008, so none of the boob numbers made it individually

perhaps even more disappointingly, only five people suggested 1312

1337 is a super dead meme so that one being unpopular isn't as surprising. but then literally nobody suggested 9001? weird!

the AACS encryption key (an illegal number) only got a handful of suggestions, which is a shame because that's a really fun one

only three people suggested "your credit card number" but if it made it past the cutoff I 100% would have put that in the tournament

meta jokes

a few people suggested variations of "the number that wins the tournament", which I think is a funnier meta joke than either of the ones that actually made the cut

a couple people also did versions of "the sum of all other numbers in the bracket" (or "all other numbers people suggested in this google form"), with a couple people who said that also thankfully adding in some conditions to only include numbers where you can actually do that

a couple people have asked me what the smallest natural number was that nobody suggested, and unfortunately (by which I mean I love this) I can't answer that because a couple people suggested "the smallest natural number nobody else suggests"

another fun one was "the number of notes on this tumblr post", which only one person suggested

three separate people did "five (the word five not the number)", "5 (the symbol not the number it represents)" and "V (the roman numeral)" (looking at them all together it kinda looks like this was the same person all three times but that's because I'm paraphrasing all of them)

googologisms and otherwise big numbers

shockingly, the famously large numbers googol and Graham's number didn't get nearly as much support as the googologisms that made it to the bracket

five people suggested numbers in the Busy Beaver sequence, but none of them suggested the same Busy Beaver number

there were also things like "the smallest counterexample to the Collatz conjecture", fully hypothetical numbers

"zillion", "bajillion", and "fuckton" got two nominations each, any of which would have been extremely fun to see in the tournament

other

a couple people just said "fibonacci number" which. do you mean like the whole sequence? maybe these should have counted for phi

two people suggested "a grizzly bear". I'm assuming that's a reference I'm not getting, because it's way too specific of a joke for two people to say that independently

there was one suggestion that was the coordinates to a restaurant in yemen called burger king 2

anyway there's literally thousands of these, and I have no intentions of at any point making a full comprehensive list of what people suggested, but I think this is a pretty good sample of what the nominees were like. there were a lot of really good candidates, but I think the 64 that made it into the tournament are a pretty dang good set of numbers!

thank you to everyone who suggested your favorite numbers, it was genuinely very fun reading through everyone's suggestions.

[bonearenaofmyskull]

Hi there! I need your thoughts on the Dolce head-sawing scene. I have read different analyses, and the most recent one I read was saying that the reason Hannibal wanted to eat Will was because Will rejected him and eating him is the only way they could be together. Also, some say that he decided to kill Will only after Will tried to stab him. Additionally, was he slowing the process and waiting for someone to show up and stop him? What are your thoughts on this theory?

My thoughts about this can be more or less represented as, Well, yes, kind of, but also not really, and also definitely not. All these pieces are disjointed from the development of the relationship in the context of the season itself, as well as the series as a whole.

First off, I don't think Hannibal was super excited about the decision to eat Will in the first place because the expression on his face when he's talking to Bedelia about it looks pretty sick to his stomach. In the scene itself he has kind of a mournful tone--tender sometimes, cruel others: a little angry, a little bitter, a lot regretful. He talks about it, how he's sorry to be leaving Italy because he would have liked to do some things for himself there, but mostly that he would have liked to show it to Will. So it's not a stretch to believe that Hannibal didn't really want to eat Will very much (except insofar as he's probably curious about eating most people just as a general rule of thumb, and ofc since this is Will eating him would probably be omg so much better than eating anyone, so there is that).

But the decision had been made. After all, he did have the location prepped with a bone saw all ready to go. He made the decision all the way back in "Secondo" when Bedelia helped him draw the connection between how his sister influenced him in ways he could not control to the way that Will influences him in ways he cannot control: from love, to betrayal, and thence into forgiveness. That Will, through his interactions with Chiyoh that reflected Hannibal's interactions with Bedelia, had come to his own version of the same conclusion that Hannibal came to--that each's influence on the other was so sufficiently out of control that the only way to end it was to kill (and in Hannibal's case, eat) the other--was of no particular consequence to Hannibal's choice, at least not in a cause-and-effect fashion.

Thus it is not a rejection on Will's side any more than it is for Hannibal: it is a gesture of their forgiveness. "You dropped your forgiveness, Will," remember? "You forgive how God forgives," he complains, in his usual hypocritical fashion (which Will turns around on him with the comment about God gloating, which of course Hannibal approves of, since they are each God in his mind). This is, God-like, forgiveness through retribution. Seeing it as rejection is far too sane and rational--and certainly far too conventional--for these two delicate creatures. Hannibal eating Will and keeping a part of him inside forever in the Hobbsean style of cannibalism, as he did with his sister, is an acceptance of how important Will is to him. On Will's side of things, choosing to kill Hannibal is the exact same gesture of acceptance: Will cannot reject Hannibal through the choice of killing, of all things, which is exactly what Hannibal influences him to do. As we see later in "Digestivo," Will can only reject Hannibal through choosing not to kill him. What happens in "Dolce" or any other point in time in S3 isn't ever a rejection (including the hug, I might point out)--not as long as Will is playing their zero-sum game. Not as long as violence is involved. Never forget that violence is love and sex and all things in between on Hannibal.

Thus they each must attempt to kill the other simultaneously because they are one, not in spite of it. Bedelia observes that "Will Graham is en route to kill you, while you lie in wait to kill him" as an extension of the conversation about the reciprocity inherent in Hannibal and Will's relationship. Everything they do, they do reciprocally, at least at this point. This is why they can have such a tender meeting below La Primavera before getting down to business: all the deceptions are gone, and they're both seeing each other with not just truly clear eyes, but truly appreciative eyes. They each can see how much they mean to the other just as much as each thinks the only path forward is to subsume the other in order to regain self-control. They each offer the other "understanding and acceptance," Jack explains to Pazzi, right as Hannibal and Will are coming to same conclusion to off each other. Will can no more reject Hannibal in this moment than Hannibal can reject Will because they are the same.

As for whether Hannibal was slowing the meal process to wait for someone to show up and stop him, we have to look at the evidence of both what Hannibal knows and whether what he knows observably influences his choices.

Hannibal may have been able to deduce that Bedelia would give him up to the Polizia just as he would count that she'd give his location to Jack, but he might not have--Bedelia's kind of a wild card in that fashion, and her choice to give him up seems to have been made specifically in exchange for the investigator telling her that he'd let her off the hook for her and Hannibal's crimes in Italy. If she had not been able to solicit that commitment for whatever reason, then there's no reason to think that she'd have betrayed their location. She wouldn't play her card without getting her win. So it seems unlikely to me that that could be something that Hannibal would be able to know confidently one way or another.

Even if he did, it's hard to see it in the scene itself. He does wait for Jack initially, but that's because Jack has an important role to play. Hannibal doesn't seem to be in any particular hurry in the scene even after Jack shows up, but then he never is, so that means nothing in itself. He doesn't really waste any time once Jack is there, either. He incapacitates Jack and drugs him (he needs to do that to ensure Jack will eat), finishes his mise en place while he waits for Jack to become coherent-ish, and then to be fair, it's pretty minimal conversation before breaking out the bone saw. Just a couple minutes. So there's no evidence in the scene itself to suggest delay, and a certain amount of evidence to suggest otherwise. If the show had wanted to demonstrate delay, it would have been prudent to write Jack getting to the table earlier in the episode, and then use their conversation to emphasize the delay, with more than one scene in the episode. They could cut the elevator scene without any significant bearing on the plot. God forbid they speed up a scene with Bedelia in it. xD

But I think the real reason I reject the notion that Hannibal was delaying is because Jack was there. Hannibal is the devil, his punishments are symbolic retribution, the three of them are literally there in Florence acting out their own version of the Inferno. Hannibal may have been eating Will's brain to try to regain his own peace of mind, but he was absolutely involving Jack in the action because Jack deserved it. He played: it's his time to pay. And it isn't like Hannibal to half-ass a murder dinner, especially if he has a guest. How rude that would be!

I think these analyses that you've read tend to fall apart in kind of the same places as a lot of analyses these days, wherein they seem to assume that because the Hannigram relationship is the heart and foremost hook of the show, the only things that are analyzed are the actions of the two men. Where their actions and words don't directly and explicitly explain something, then people fill in the gaps with their own imagination and values, when in fact the other characters' words and actions and the overall context of the show usually explain things pretty clearly. The other characters are important, as is the overall path of the relationship.

[naranjapetrificada]

The first thing I should ever have said about Izzy and the last thing I intend to say until at least October 26th.

[Although I am not Her strongest soldier, so who knows if I will stick the landing.]

So to start with, I was a "late" arrival to the show. I knew it existed of course, but I only occasionally saw things that reminded me it existed. The first time I saw a mention of "grumpy/sunshine" it was with a picture of Ed and Stede, so I guess on some level I knew there was shipping going on, but that was literally all I knew. I didn't even know it involved Blackbeard lol.

Which is all to say that I first approached and watched season 1 removed from basically anything anyone had to say about it. I think what actually got me to watch it wasn't anything anyone had to say either, it was from youtube recommendations? Like I think I had watched a couple Taika interviews or something and ofmd stuff started showing up? So after catching a few clips and intentionally spoiling the kiss for myself (life is too short to be queerbaited) I watched it in April/May 2023, and was Changed by it the way so many other people were. It grabbed me so hard I started looking for fics, and when fic grabbed me even harder I became a regular tumblr user for the first time ever in June 2023.

What I didn't do, before the second half of 2023, was care particularly much about Izzy Hands.

I remember describing him as psychologically fascinating to the first IRL friend I talked to about the show, and joking that he just needed a good dom. As much as his decision to call in the navy was a threat to Stede's and Ed's lives, I saw his actions as part of a thing needed for the story, and while I knew he was one of the season's villains there wasn't really any heat behind that assessment.

For me he was there to set things in motion, and to serve the narrative in certain ways, to be a foil, more storytelling tool than man. That doesn't mean I didn't think Con did an excellent job adding layers to him, he absolutely made Izzy take up space and feel more present and textured than he otherwise might have. But when I began to zoom out and consider things on meta level, Izzy existed to do a certain thing or occupy a certain place in relation to the narrative and other characters more than anything else. And that was fine.

Then I started reading meta here, and found myself surrounded by passionate conversations about Izzy from many directions occurring with an intensity that I couldn't wrap my brain around. I saw people tying themselves into knots to justify and excuse the behavior of a textual antagonist, and I was baffled and because I still saw Izzy for what his role in the narrative was, it literally made no sense to see his behavior explained away. In the framework I brought to the fandom when I first arrived, trying to explain away Izzy's behavior would be like looking at a forest fire and trying to explain away processes like combustion and oxidation. Or if you'll allow me to borrow another extended, nature-based metaphor from a fic in an entirely different fandom:

Again, because from where my head was at, it didn't make sense to look at Izzy's morality as a zero sum game because in this metaphor, he was functionally just a brackish body of water. I'm not saying the morality is brackish, I'm saying the morality was literally not the point because like an estuary, an antagonist "must exist" because antagonists exist for specific reasons directly related to storytelling goals.

So there was no real heat behind my feelings about him or his actions, beyond the natural emotional reactions we have to characters and their behaviors before we zoom out. I was of course upset with his treatment of Lucius, which was targeted compared to other members of the crew. I was annoyed with the way he talked to and about Ed. I laughed when his plans had the equal and opposite results of what he intended, which you could argue happened with every single plan he made for the entirety of season 1. And yes, especially as a Black person living in the US, I felt the fear and betrayal that comes from seeing someone call the cops (which given the show and its writers, it does not feel like a stretch to describe calling the navy that). I wondered if there was any coming back from a choice like that, which is a big overriding question for the series as a whole.

I'm not here to debate any of the points in the previous paragraph. I know how I feel and you feel how you feel and there's already been so much said about the morality of it all by people who have explained themselves well, so let them convince you or not. Instead I've been trying to talk about the two sides of my experience before and after getting into the fandom with Izzy.

Before: Izzy Hands, Narratively Useful Antagonist Portrayed Compellingly And Effectively by Con O'Neill.

After: Izzy Hands, Unfortunate Avatar Of The Sadly Common Tendency For Certain Fans To Hyperfocus On A White Antagonist Or Secondary Character When There Already Exists A Protagonist They're A Foil Of (And Also It Looks Bad TO Do That When The Protagonist Is Someone With A Marginalized Identity).

I'm not here to argue the merits of those assessments either, because that's not the point. The point is the vast gulf between them and how the latter does such an incredible disservice to the Izzy we were given and that so many people claim to love. The latter comes from a place where morality is the focus, which I'm sorry y'all, feels like it originates with people who refuse to countenance Izzy's role in the story as well as his characterization.

Viewers who were willing to see Izzy as an antagonist, who don't view the word "antagonist" as a value judgement in and of itself, who don't think that finding an antagonist charismatic or compelling means anything about their own morality, those people can look at the show we were given and take it for what it was made to be. I'm not saying that it's only the Izzy stans (not enjoyers, not jar people) who start fights or that people who understand that Izzy is an antagonist don't also have deep morality related feelings about him and his actions in the first season. What I am saying is that sanding off Izzy's rough edges and trying to make him into something he isn't poisons even the possibility of having a discussion about him because people enter the conversation with two completely different understandings of reality. If you cannot accept the job that season 1 Izzy was given to do to move the story along, well you might as well have watched a completely different show for how much that fanon Izzy has anything to do with the canon one.

This show deserves better than that. The writers deserve better than that. Con O'Neill deserves better than that. Israel Basilica Hands deserves better than that. We all do.

[biggaybunny]

Stellaris is a fascinating mess of systems that I could talk forever about. For those unaware, it’s a grand strategy game that takes place in a galaxy filled with different alien nations. If you don’t know what a grand strategy game is then google it or something I’m not your mother.

Anyway one of my favorite little tidbits is one of the fundamental underpinnings of how diplomacy works, which is the relationship score. Your relationship with another empire is the sum of two numbers, your opinion of them (on a scale from something like -1500 to 1500 or something like that), and their opinion of you. These two numbers are themselves sums of several different factors such as diplomatic arrangements you’ve made, compatibility of political ideology, frequency with which you bathe, etcetera.

Now the part I want to talk about *specifically* is the basic diplomatic action you almost always have available to you: “Improve Relations”. It’s the most basic idea: you ship over a diplomatic envoy to shake their least slimy tendrils and say nice things about the way they’ve decorated the place. This improves their opinion of you, which as you may remember, makes your relationship as a whole go in the positive direction. Pretty simple.

Now the funny part is that. Well. The developers decided that obviously you need the opposite option. You need a way to say “I DON’T want to be friends with that alien empire, they bathe far too frequently for my tastes”. And what’s the opposite of Improving Relations, of course? Why, Harming Relations! So you. You send them an envoy. Whose entire job is to just... piss these people off. To shake the incorrect tendril and insult their aesthetic senses just because they happen to be a race of sentient cubes. You make them hate you, because you already don’t like them, and I guess you feel awkward about it not being mutual? And the funniest thing is that AI-controlled nations will, of course, use this option! If you’re trying to butter up the powerful, belligerent warmongering star empire next to you because you’re a race of peace-loving snails and you’ve spent this entire time building megamalls in fucking space instead of, like, military installations, that empire will go “oh no you don’t” and send one of their envoys over to start calling you a poopy stinky slimeball, resulting in a net zero change in your relationship score with them. Of course, this means that, technically, they have an extremely high opinion of you after a while, because the envoy you’ve sent over is affecting their opinion, and the one they’ve sent over is affecting yours, but you know, let’s not think too hard about that.

Oh, and there’s uh, already another mechanic for lowering their opinion of you. It’s the “insult” diplomacy option. So you can like, ring up the Borg or whoever, ask them if you can speak to Hugh Jass, and then hang up on them when they yell at you. So the whole system is redundant but nevermind.

Stellaris, everybody!

[rotzaprachim]

the thing is that in real life I’ve been accused of “only caring about Palestinians” or abandoning Jews or something after Oct 7 because I’ve been so focused on the ceasefire efforts and advocacy, and it’s like, of course I am. If I could bring back anyone killed on October 7 I could but I can’t and so the only thing I can do now is prevent more deaths. That’s what I can do. And on here I’ve now been accused of being a selfish nihilistic white nationalist cryptozionist for talking about antisemitism, because that is the fire I see happening every day on social media and at this point it has now got a body count. And it’s like, we have got to allow people the realization that the best thing we can do is put out fires where we see them. We do what we can. That’s the best we can do. but a few addendums:

Let’s stop assuming peoples opinions based on what they /don’t/ post. There’s so so many reasons people are /not/ posting about things on (anonymous/semi anonymous) social media in particular that governments everywhere /are/ cracking down on pro-Palestine activism and so peoples posting may not be apathy but rule number one of protesting, which is don’t doxx your comrades!

in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7 I reblogged a post with links to support, one of those links ended up leading straight to a group that had celebrated the H AMAs attacks. A day later I saw a post trying to discredit recordings of the attacks and it linked to a website that linked to the daily stormer. This is the newspaper of the KKK. I’ve also reblogged things that were shared by people who have also supported the Russian and Syrian governments continuously. This is not me telling you NOT to support journalists or the need, but it is me telling you how I have been part of the misinformation feed as no well and why I am hesitant to share unsourced information. I will not reblog or post anything that does not have an immediate source link. White nationalists, tankies, and white supremacists are not your friends. They do not care about the Palestinian cause.

I think people are really, really lost on the dangers and extent of antisemitism. I am patently not saying that what’s happening to Jews is /as bad/ or /less bad/ than the absolutely horrific war crimes being inflicted against gazan citizens right now. I am not saying that. I am saying that whole hearted willful antisemitism is being partaken of by a huge sector of people around the world, both white and nonwhite, and I do not think people fully understand there repercussions of it because they think Jews are still ultimately privileged and it ranges from /not that bad/ to /something they’ve all collectively made up to justify war crimes./ I cannot emphasize enough how bad public, violent antisemitism done in the name of the Palestinian cause is to both antizionism and the support of Palestine. This is not a two sides zero sum game, this is something that is actively harming the movement in real time and which people do NOT comprehend is happening in the age of the screenshot, where anyone can get recorded. One of the most significant issue is that attacking Jews and Jewish institutions has now made this a domestic citizen issue in many countries, and that has given Islamophobia and anti-Arab security states a legal prerogative to attack Muslims and Arab communities as well as any Palestinian activism. Calling for the mass death of Jews (even the ones you don’t like) on social media is an incitement to ethnic violence, guys, and it’s made so so much worse when you’ve put a Palestinian flag in your bio. These “neutral” things on social media are having a REAL impact on attacks on Jews AND on legal crackdowns against Palestinian activism.

there are a lot of bad actors out there and both Jewish and pro-Palestine groups I fear have gotten in bed with some really sketchy people because they’re saying what they want to hear. “I hate terrorism and especially Arab terrorism!!!” Is something conservative white nationalists have been saying for years and it’s best if Jews don’t get in bed with those who want to claim everyone is supporting Hamas! Likewise, the idea of “Zionists” and “the Zionist occupied government” or “evil Zionist pigs” has been used by the kkk and other explicitly white supremacist groups for years, and it’s for the fucking best if people don’t deny what actual white nationalists are saying, and don’t decide that everyoneeee calling for the death of the Zionist scourge is their friends.

[oldshrewsburyian]

hi, I have a question: for context, theres the tumblr blog "writingwithcolor" for giving advice on how to represent poc. They got an ask from someone wanting to write historical fiction with ppl from medieval Europe and the middle east interacting, asking how to include the negative opinions the cultures had of each other: the ME seeing Europe as "dirty and uncivilized " while Europe saw the ME as effeminate, so they asked how to include these opinions without demonizing either culture.

They asked: "They asked "Do you have any advice on including these views in a narrative without validating the idea of Europeans as the 'victims' or without unnecessarily juxtaposing the more-advanced middle east in the middle of a golden age with their less advanced European neighbors"

The reply they got was basically "actually, the Europeans were stinky barbarians". They stated "one of these regions thought diseases could be cured by blood-letting and huffing toilets while the other was inventing algebra It’s difficult to argue that Europe was doing well by any metric after the collapse of the Roman Empire. "

They gave examples of other cultures being "light years ahead" of Europe, such as the Moors "revitalizing Spanish and Sicilian civilization through agriculture, architecture, astronomy and restoration of Roman sanitation systems", king Mansa Musa giving out so much gold he destroyed the local economy and the giant junks of the majapahit empire as examples of non-european civilizations outdoing Europe. They implied that anyone objecting to Europe being portrayed badly has "white fragility".

What is your opinion on this response? Is it fair to Europe to portray them as inferior?

Oh, I've seen that question and response. I think I've even replied to it. It's bad. It's bad because, as a post I reblogged earlier today says, historical accuracy matters. Also, it seems to play the sort of zero-sum game that I see elsewhere on the internet, which wants to gleefully reverse old and oppressive narratives... only to create new narratives with new acceptable categories of exclusion. Do I think that more attention in secondary and post-secondary education should be given to premodern societies around the globe? of course! I teach premodern global history all the time! But here's my bigger problem with this sort of "Europe bad and backwards" sneering, even bigger than the "it's wrong" problem.

This sort of measurement of societies "outdoing" each other is based on Eurocentric categories which were and are used to uphold white supremacy, colonialism, classism, and ableism. I alluded to this in an earlier exchange with you. To say that a society (I'm deliberately avoiding the term civilization) is automatically "superior" or "more advanced" when it has certain kinds of technology, or certain kinds of social and political organization, or certain kinds/degrees of wealth, or certain kinds of literacy, or certain kinds of religious belief (or lack thereof)? That is an imperialist script! Because this is Tumblr, the Negative Reading Comprehension Site: I'm obviously not accusing people who are doing a lot of emotionally taxing and important work of deliberately reinforcing imperialist (etc.) scripts. But reiterating inaccurate stereotypes based on Vibes/Wishful Thinking is bad no matter who does it!

Please reflect on the narrative of "the replacement of a multi-continental empire with decentralized political and legal structures was obviously Terrible" and on why, exactly, that was easily accepted when Edward Gibbon was writing his Decline and Fall... in late 18th-century Britain. Yeah. Also, that "more advanced Middle East" narrative has a history that is Orientalist and othering in its own way (ooh, all that exotic learning! the baths! the gardens!) It assumes, for one thing, that there's no contact and exchange between the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates ("Moors" is a racist term, by the way) and their neighbors. If the representation you've given is accurate, it also follows old/outdated scholarship in representing Spain as somehow not quite European because of all the Muslims in it/ruling it, which... yikes. And, at the risk of pointing out the very obvious: ancient Rome, whose art and literature and 'civilization' were so long so admired in Europe, was a slave society. I'm not going to wring my hands about its disputed fall.

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

talk about iron will's importance. now

Iron Will's importance to the series is kinda threefold, tbh.

On one level, it's clearly a reference to the Dragonslayer of Berserk fame, and therefore one of Taro's clear inspirations for especially the first Drakengard, where it appears as Hymir's Finger*.

Consequently, it's also tied in to Caim as the 'discount Guts' of the Drakenier universe***, which is extremely important to the events of Nier. See, I may be wrong about this, but aside from the Nameless Blade you get at the start, Iron Will is I think the only weapon the game... gives you? Like, there's weapons you get in the course of the story, but Iron Will is the only weapon the game itself hands you in a cutscene, and as such is kinda... by necessity relevant? Like, active thought had to go into handing you that sword at that point in the story, and considering that this is very early into Act II of the game, where our protagonist takes a darker turn along with the rest of the story... well, I may be too far up Mr. Yoko's thematical backside (please see next paragraph for evidence of that), but... I don't think it's an accident that you get given a weapon so closely associated with Caim at this point in the story, especially when the conversation immediately following Iron Will's completion ends with Nier resolving to help Gideon's mad quest for revenge purely because he gets to kill a single Shade at the end of it.

On a level deeper than even that load of nonsense, the evolution of the Iron Will as a weapon kinda mirrors the evolution of the series itself? As presented in Drakengard 1, the weapon story is about the weight of death, with the unsettling implication at the end that perhaps the sword has found a wielder who is unconcerned with death, a perfect microcosm of Taro's then-philosophy of 'you have to be pretty fucked up to kill people'. This evolves down to Nier, where the sword begins by boasting of the people it kills, but in the final part of the story admits that it dreams of things beyond its status as a weapon of slaughter. Then Drakengard 3 portrays it as a thing that despises its own existence as a weapon, consumed by bloodshed and longing for something it cannot have - kinda like Zero, eh? And finally**** Nier Automata, where the Iron Will is rusted, useless and abandoned, but dug up regardless to engage in unceasing pointless war, over and over again. That's the inherent advantage of the Iron Will, I think - it allows Taro to present the theme of the games in microcosm, because the weapon itself does not need more explanation than 'Dragonslayer at Home'.

Soo... yeah. I think the Iron Will is really important to the themes of Drakenier, and I'm really exited to kill all of humanity wielding it this time around the Replicant train.

*whose name, incidentally, plays into the 'reverse religious morality' thing that Drakengard 1 has going on thematically - in much the same way that the final two routes are the literal Red Dragon of the Book of Revelations fighting the literal angels of heaven alongside a man named after a literal demon, you do it wielding a sword named after what might be interpreted as either the creator god or the father of evil from Norse Mythology.**

**Which, in a weird way, also plays back into the Berserk influence - Guts in that series is fighting against something called The God-Hand, after all, but we're not here to get into Berserk right now.

***I don't know for sure if it's the sword Caim uses in Drakengard 2 - looking at the video of his arrival now I can't tell if it's Broken Iron or his own personal sword - but honestly it feels like it should be Broken Iron, so I'm counting it.

****I know what the DOD2 and Reincarnation stories say, but Drakengard 2's is about as bland as everything else about that game, and Reincarnation has the inherent problem of being a LiiiiVe SeeeRvICE, so you can't easily sum up the themes of every single story in it.

[bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls]

The Daily Dad — Dec 21, 2023

Things you might want to know:

Olivia Dunne alleges she's been 'shadow banned' by TikTok as views plummet 💭 Whenever I see quotes from Livvy Dunne, I’m slightly surprised to remember she has a voice. On my phone, the girl’s always on mute.

Jonathan Majors Dropped By Marvel After Guilty Verdict, Will No Longer Play Kang The Conqueror In Upcoming Films 💭 Fuck it, call Eddie Murphy. Kang can be played by literally anyone, while Eddie’s got the balls to step into the middle of a massive franchise-in-motion, the acting chops to deliver solid work, and the ability to bring a winking bit of fun to what would otherwise be an awkward recasting.

What Happens When Facebook Heats Your Home ❝ Big Tech data centers are not only being used to power the internet but also to heat people’s homes. But who’s really winning when Facebook keeps you warm at night?

Tom Cruise, 61, spotted canoodling with Russian socialite, 36, who has $1M handbag collection: report 💭 Does a gentleman canoodle before or after finger-banging his lady fair?

Donald Trump Used to Get Nazi Greeting at Work: Ivana 💭 I’m less struck by Trump’s everyday fetishization of genocidal lunatics than by the blasé reaction of everyone around him. He was never crazy-rich, after all, and his zero-sum greed was legendary… so kissing his ass wasn’t that profitable. I feel like people just “let it go” because it was impossible to take seriously the actions of such a trivial man.

The Scott Pilgrim Anime Backlash, Explained ❝ Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off doesn’t adapt the source material, and reactions have been mixed

They Didn’t Ask to Go Viral. Posting on Social Media Without Consent Is Immoral 💭 Mass-media outlets used to conduct themselves with a level of decorum: they’d illustrate a story about obesity with a sidewalk shot of dozens of fat people, but they’d always crop out or blur the heads. Today’s internet prank fucks and click-chasing scolds have no concept of restraint. And this is why we can’t have nice things.

Suspects can refuse to provide phone passcodes to police, court rules ❝ Phone-unlocking case law is "total mess," may be ripe for Supreme Court review.

Gossip TikToks Are Carving Away Privacy IRL 💭 This is super-creepy, and is one of those weird little phenomena that are actually more relevant to day-to-day life than the techno-panic over a half-dozen dumbfucks deliriously jerking off to Bin Laden’s manifesto on TikTok.

Gen Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do 💭 Well of course they do. Boomer grandparents get scammed via phone calls, while the Permanently Online get screwed via text. Into every generation are born a host of dumbasses.

Lara Croft: The Art of Virtual Seduction is the ultimate cringey relic of late '90s game advertising 💭 I can honestly say that nothing about ‘90s Lara Croft ever gave me a boner, but the novelty of the character design did make me play the original game for an hour or two more than I would have if Lara had been replaced by a more masculine set of triangles.

Twitch immediately rescinds its artistic nudity policy ❝ Mere days after Twitch updated its content policy to permit certain kinds of sexual content, the platform has withdrawn the portion of the policy permitting “artistic nudity.”

The buttons on Zenith’s original ‘clicker’ remote were a mechanical marvel 💭 We had one of these when I was a kid, and their mechanical nature meant that most primordial dads were super-protective of their Space Commands. It was entirely possible to wear out the mechanism, so no one else was allowed to touch The Precious. Naturally, I clicked the fuck out of it anytime he was gone.

John Waters and David Lynch really love Lana Del Rey ❝ This isn’t the first time Waters has praised Del Rey. “She’s very David Lynch to me,” he added in the RS interview. “She infuriates people, but I think she’s in on it. I really want her to hook up with David Lynch, because he produces great albums these days.”

Next Beeper Mini Fix Requires Users to Have a Mac - MacRumors 💭 This whole micro-drama is like watching a bored cat playing with an ambitiously stupid mouse.

Walton Goggins' Fallout Role Is Far More Interesting Than It May Seem ❝ Nolan also revealed that they intentionally dialed back on The Ghoul’s prosthetics in order to ensure that Goggins’ performance comes through all that makeup. As Nolan explains, the team didn’t want to hinder the reasons they cast Goggins in the first place by burying him in makeup.

Holly Marie Combs Reveals That 'Charmed' Co-Star Alyssa Milano Got Shannen Doherty Fired: "By Today's Standards, It Wouldn’t F***ing Fly" ❝ And he said, ‘We didn’t mean to.’ He said that we’ve been backed into this corner. We’re basically in a position where it’s one or the other. We were told that’s her or me, and Alyssa [Milano] has threatened to sue us for a hostile workplace environment.

2023 in social media: the case for the fediverse ❝ A new kind of social internet is currently forming. Right now it might still look like “Twitter and Reddit, only different,” but that’s only the very beginning of what’s to come. Hopefully.

GoodLinks Adds Even Deeper Shortcuts Integration with Ability to Retrieve Current Article, Selections, and More 💭 I’m experimenting with using this as the basis for my Daily Dad workflow… unlike the previous process, I can write these blurbs outside Tumblr and keep them searchable and organized in a dedicated datastore. We’ll see how it works.

[gmaxmeltdown]

Yippee I finished the indigo disk

Indigo Disk none spoiler review and personal opinions:

Please remember these are just my personal thoughts and opinions on the game, if you disagree that’s perfectly fine and I’d love to hear your opinions in the notes, although if you’re rude or try to argue I will block you.

Final none spoiler review:

Story: 6/10, it was good I enjoyed it though it felt lacking, could’ve had more to it but overall enjoyable and fun, took itself seriously and it was pretty interesting for the most part I really do feel like there should’ve been more to it.

Region: 5/10, it was fun to explore although a bit too small in my opinion kitakami felt bigger and felt like had more diversity, it wasn’t bad though.

Characters: 8/10, I liked the characters a lot tbh I know there wasn’t exactly to much to them but I thought they actually had a lot of personality despite that, i definitely need to draw them at some point. Drayton I think was definitely a favorite although Kieran comes a close second, cringefall boy was surprisingly an enjoyable character imo.

Pokémon: 7/10, both new and returning Pokémon I felt like they were good choices and I think the old ones fit into their new models and the new ones look very nice of course some look better than others but that just goes for all of them.

Battles: 8/10, not to hard and not to easy! It really made me think especially the double battles! It was a nice change of pace from just spamming crit moves and honestly all of them were super fun, despite the fact I favor two types and usually use those exclusively (psychic and dark) I was actually able to beat the bosses pretty well with just those few and like three that weren’t either of those typings, I genuinely think these battles may have been the most fun I’ve had in any of the games.

Graphics: 6/10 basically the same graphics from the base game, could be better but I’m not exactly a graphics guy I will literally play a game with the graphics being like four pixels if the story is engaging enough.

Soundtrack: 10/10 per usual as expected from a Pokémon game, really not much more to say about that other than I will definitely have some of the songs on loop for awhile.

So do I think the DLC was worth the price after finishing both the Teal Mask and the Indigo Disk?

Yes! In my opinion it was money well spent, I enjoyed it but if you’re expecting like a 10/10 amazing story with twist and turns and super amazing writing with like the hardest competitive battles you’ve ever faced, probably not for you, if your just wanting to have fun and enjoy a nice game with a decent story and a bit of a challenge in terms of battles, you might enjoy this!

Spoiler review (also me just going on a giant rant you can get the idea from above.)

THIS RANT/REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE INDIGO DISK IF YOU ARE AVOIDING SPOILERS DO NOT READ BELOW THIS, IF YOU GET SPOILED DO NOT BLAME IT ON ME THIS IS YOUR WARNING AND CHANCE TO COME BACK LATER WHEN YOUR READY

I said this but I’m gonna go a bit deeper on it, the story was lacking. I was a little disappointed on it to be honest I really thought it was gonna lead up to one huge finale where you, Carmine, Kieran, Arven, Penny, and Nemona we’re gonna all have to team up in one final fight to save Paldea and ultimately catch the final form of Teratopagose, (excuse me if I spelled that wrong I don’t feel like googling it),

In reality it was literally just “Hey guys wanna go down DEEPER into Area Zero and catch a turtle cuz I’m hyperfixated on teralization?”

And then you go down there with Carmine and Kieran and Kieran has self esteem issues (I feel you, man) and looses his shit and then you catch a turtle. It was just such a huge build up to this all powerful thing that was sounded like it was gonna be a huge threat to just turn out like that, it was super unwhelming but o that than that it was decent and fun.

Of course there’s loads more to it than just that buuuut that more or less sums it up or at least the end part, the beginning part is just the basic “defeat the elite four and then fight the champion (except this time give him a mental breakdown:3)” which was good and fun and I have nothing more to say on it other than I enjoyed it a lot.

My major disappointment is that Penny Arven and Nemona didn’t return especially with the file leaks it really seemed like they were going to, I was really looking forward to going back to Area Zero with them to finish things only for it to just be Carmine Kieran and Briar who really needs to chill on her hyperfixation because she almost just led three children to their deaths.

Why on God’s green earth was she the only adult why did Greta and Rika decide this woman is a suitable chaperone my incineroar and honchkrow are the only reason we’re not dead.

I do think the story is a step in the right direction both for the base game and the dlc but despite my slanders I really did enjoy it and it was fun.

Anyway end of my review have this:

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

Retro-Janeing: chapters 10 and 11

"It was dreadful to think you out never to have been born… that your own mother wasn't glad to have you." Jane doesn't quite realize it, I'm sure, but she is describing Phyllis' mom's experience. If I have my family tree correct, Phyllis' mother is the third of Mrs. Kennedy's children by her first husband. She knows keenly what it's like to have a mother who isn't glad to have her. Aunt Sylvia got out through marrying someone her mother approves of -- this to her is the correct path for Robin as well. Getting divorced and remarrying would get Robin out of her mother's house and Jane too. Even if it's not a love match, or a perfect marriage, it has to be better than grandmother's house. Which, of course, is why grandmother wouldn't hear of it.

Phyllis knows a great deal about this whole situation. Do we imagine she's known for a while, either because her parents told her directly or because they discuss it around her a lot? Or do we imagine that after the dreadful family conference about Jane going to the island that Phyllis' parents told her what they knew? Either way, this is so far the most functional family unit we have.

Meanwhile, I think this is the first mention of Irene, and already we set up the tension between her and grandmother. This book does this thing where it kind of throws characters at you and wants you to keep up. Blue Castle did it too, to an extent, but it had fewer characters so it's easier to keep track. But clearly it's a thing LMM likes to do -- to toss in a reference to a character and then introduce them properly later. It builds the world as more realistic -- and in this particular case serves to put the reader into Jane's shoes as the name washes right over her -- but I don't always love it. We're a ways away from it yet, but one of my complaints about this book is that there are honestly too many characters in it, and it's not helped by half of them just being dropped into the narrative one day as if they've always been there.

Do we think the staff at St. Agatha's sent inquiries to the house as to whether Jane was ill? Becoming noticeably thinner in a few weeks is generally a bad sign. Or was that kind of checking and watching not in the school's purview at this point? Wouldn't have done any good, but I am curious about a full outside perspective of Jane.

What is grandmother worried about, when she restricts Jane from writing more than once a month? I can't figure out if she's hoping that breaking the bond between Robin and Jane will mean Jane wants to stay on PEI permanently, once she meets Andrew, or if she just is so wedded to being jealous of Jane that she can't bear the thought of Jane and Robin communicating freely for any reason. (Or, possibly most likely, is she worried that Jane will be happy on the island and tell Robin as much and entice Robin to leave again?)

So Robin thinks that Andrew doesn't love her anymore. Furthermore, she has lived her whole life with her mother, and so she thinks Jane loving her will taint Jane in Andrew's eyes. After all, back in chapter one we get this about grandmother: "And Jane felt, if she did not yet know, that grandmother did not like mother loving her so much." At Gay Street, love is a zero sum game. Neither Jane nor Robin have any reason to expect things to be different on PEI.

Enter Mrs. Stanley. This book has never heard of the law of economy of characters and on some level I respect that. Like I said earlier about Irene, it makes the world feel more complete. And we don't get a character sketch of Mrs. Stanley either, beyond her name and why she's going to the island and that she isn't impressed with Jane. Which is also more true to life than some books -- our lives are indeed filled with meetings with strangers we only see once and never again. It's fun as a reader to get little sketches of every character who interacts with the protagonist, but it's more true to Jane's lived experience to know nothing at all about this woman and have her vanish from the story after this one interaction.

[caesarflickermans]

Spoiler for The Hunger Games : Mockingjay.

When you first read or watch Mockingjay, did you know or predict that Primrose was gonna die?

Who do you think were responsible for her death? Why?

If Katniss couldn’t protect Primrose until the end, was it all useless?

Disclaimer : these questions are for textual analysis, it's not meant to incite fandom war, please DNI if you don't like this topic.

Thank you.

@curiousnonny

When you first read or watch Mockingjay, did you know or predict that Primrose was gonna die?

I don't really remember. It's been so long, I just know I read the books ASAP around the first movie releasing.

Who do you think were responsible for her death? Why?

Coin. Gale (and Beetee) might have developed the bomb, workers might have loaded it on the plane, a pilot might have flown it here. However, Coin was the ultimate decision maker in her District, and the responsibility lies with her. Everyone else in that chain was a replaceable; they could have found another pilot, other workers, other developers (they could have even dropped a different bomb!, e.g. two in quick succession).

If Katniss couldn’t protect Primrose until the end, was it all useless?

No. Katniss might think this, and she might at times feel regret and wonder about the life she might have lived had Prim's name never been drawn. Death isn't a zero sum game, of course, and Prim's death will always hurt Katniss. However, many many live free now because of her. We only gain a limited perspective on what Panem looks like after the war. But we can guess that the fate of many lives and many generations were changed because of what Katniss did. On an individual level, Prim's death might feel like that. On a collective level, the price of freedom far outweighs the continued oppression.

[imaginarylungfish]

after recovering from my chronic illness (ie. i only have flares like 1-2x/yr instead of symptoms every day), i see how damaging it was to my psyche to not be believed as sick by doctors and my family at first. that set my recovery back so much. it made me second guess myself and dismiss my pain so much so that even to this day (about 3 years since daily symptoms) i don't have a good idea of when i'm too sick to go to work. (ie. i just push through when i should probably rest.)

that experience of people invalidating my pain just made me default to always believing someone when they say they are hurting. physically or emotionally. sure, they may not realize their pain isn't as bad as others' pain but why do we need to compare? their pain is still bad enough. their reality matters. their pain matters.

comparing pain seems really useless ~most of the time~. (of course, there are instances where we must triage or put someone's needs above our own, but that's not ~most of the time~.)

example: at my work this week (i work at a nature center where we lead field trips for elementary school kids), my coworker asked if someone else could greet the school when they arrived because her asthma was bad. my asthma was also bad that day and i was having an mcas flare, so i turned to see if another coworker would step up. one did and things worked out fine.

my coworker with asthma and i did not need to compare our pain to see whose was worse and more "worthy" of sitting out. we just passed the job onto someone else. our other coworker helped out and picked up the slack (as will we when someone else needs us to step up).

so, i just don't see that much good come from comparing pain. i've had people over the years try to tell me their pain is worse than mine, as if it's a contest. that feels super shitty and invalidating. (i understand those people are probably just trying to get their pain validated, but sometimes i don't have the capacity for that when i am also in pain.)

pain isn't a zero-sum game. just because i'm in pain doesn't mean you aren't. we can both be in pain. and we can both help each other in/with our pain.

so, i guess what i'm trying to say is that it seems like validating people's pain is better than the alternatives. i don't know what other people feel unless they tell me. so, if someone is telling me they are in pain, who am i to tell them they are wrong?

[arcticdementor]

It was a belated awakening. For many American Jews, Oct. 7 uncovered the deep rot in the elite institutions they had invested in for decades, psychically and financially. A recent poll found that 73% of Jewish students experienced or witnessed antisemitic incidents since the beginning of this academic school year, a 22-fold increase over the year before. Jewish students have been punched, spat upon, assaulted with sticks, shouted at, and corralled by students in kaffiyehs. But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the DEI regime has fostered the flourishing of campus antisemitism under the Palestinian banner. Having established Jews as members of the “oppressor” class and defined “justice” as the dismantling of this class, the officially sanctioned ideology has given license to the Palestinian vanguard to demand fulfillment of the progressive promise, “by any means necessary,” while turning Jewish students into piñatas. In New York City public colleges, a kippa-wearing, red-headed leprechaun named Ilya Bratman—former U.S. Army tankist, applied linguist, long-distance runner, and immigrant from the former Soviet Union—has witnessed up close the socialization of young Americans into this toxic worldview. A teacher of English composition at Baruch and John Jay colleges who holds a Ph.D. in education from the Jewish Theological Seminary, he also serves as executive director of Hillel at eight CUNY and SUNY colleges.

…

After the students use cookie cutters to shape chocolate chip cookie dough into Stars of David, Bratman grabbed a microphone and stepped forward. “Last week, everybody was already seated in my 8:00 a.m. class, and a student comes in and she says to me, “Wow, I can’t believe you bombed that hospital last night and killed all those people.”

…

Bratman’s reaction, as a teacher, was to affirm the importance of sound reasoning and argumentation—and, of course, language. “I told her, ‘Wow, I can’t believe you forgot completely everything I taught you about the accusative voice and the proper use of the pronoun ‘you,’ because you just said that ‘I’ did this,” he recounted. “‘I’ bombed the hospital. What hospital? Where? Who?’”

…

Bratman believes strongly in America and the American dream. Teaching American students in New York City has brought him face-to-face with an entirely different worldview—one that appears to be particularly common among students from officially sanctioned “minority” backgrounds. The students don’t appreciate what a gift they’ve been given to live in America. Instead, they are lost in a zero-sum game of calculating relative oppressions. This fixation stops them from learning, Bratman believes, in part because it assures them that they will fail. In his composition classes, he explained, he tries to get his students to create and support an argument. One week, he asked them to write about space exploration. Should we go to space? Or should we not? One girl argued in favor of space travel because “white people will move to space, maybe to Mars, or wherever,” creating a gap, or an opening into which the “indigenous brown and black people can move up in the class structure and fill that gap left behind by the white people who will move to Mars.” “There’s a lot to unpack there, isn’t there?” Bratman responded. “First of all, the belief in this structure where white people are on top, everybody else on the bottom, and the only way to move up is if the white people leave.” Another girl wrote that no, we should not have space travel because then the white people would colonize the Martian people, as they always do, and ruin the Martians’ lives.

…

The narrative of victimhood has become welded to these young people’s identity, leading to an increased detachment from, and a sense of grievance toward, America—the irony of course being that they and their parents chose to immigrate here. One girl in the class told him: “I am here in this country against my will.” Bratman asked her: “Who’s holding you? Tell me, please. I’m frightened for you,” showcasing his high-energy, high-drama style. “Everybody’s laughing, and I asked her, ‘Where are you from?’ And she says, ‘Haiti.’ OK. ‘And where were you born?’ And she says, ‘Brooklyn.’” “So you’re actually from Brooklyn. Your parents are from Haiti,” he repeated. “Who’s holding you back? Do you really want to go to Haiti today? You should actually go and see what life is like in a noncapitalist, depressed country that is in a desperate economic struggle. Or go to Gaza to a totalitarian, autocratic, hateful, homophobic nation. Or go to North Korea, go to Iran, go to all the places as a young woman, and see what life is really like.”

…

Bratman told me he had a student at John Jay whom he will never forget, a student struggling mightily at school. “I had many conversations with him,” Bratman said. “I’d say, ‘come, come on, keep going, keep going.’ And he said, ‘No, I’m thinking of dropping out.’” “And I’m like, no, no, get through this class. I got you. I got you. And I carried him through this course. And on the last day he came to see me, and he said, ‘I dropped out of all the classes except for yours. Everybody in my family, including my mother and my grandparents—I don’t know my father—my uncles and everybody said, ‘What are you doing? Why are you going to college? You can get a job now for $20 an hour, and when you graduate, you’re gonna get a job for $20 an hour. What’s the purpose?’” Bratman seemed genuinely sad—not angry or offended, just sad—about what he heard next. “No one ever believed in me,” the student said. “I can’t believe that the first and only person who’s ever believed in me is a white Jew.”

[comma-after-dearest]

In defense of the "selfish" prayers in "God Help the Outcasts"

In discussions of Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I’ve seen several people reference the “selfish” prayers of the chorus during “God Help the Outcasts,” in contrast to Esmeralda’s selflessness. This was undoubtedly the intention. But are these other prayers really selfish?

Let’s look at them one by one.

“I ask for wealth”

What’s wrong with that? Especially for a poor person just struggling to get by? Almost everyone wants more money than they have. Sure, there’s a big difference between wishing for obscene levels of wealth and wishing for just enough for you and your family to live comfortably, but even the former doesn’t make you a bad person. In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye has a whole song fantasizing about being rich and showing off his wealth, and he’s a (mostly) sympathetic character. And of course, wealth can also be used to better the lives of the less fortunate.

“I ask for fame”

A bit shallow, maybe, but again, what’s wrong with wanting fame? What’s wrong with wanting people to recognize you and celebrate you? Almost everyone has wanted to be famous at some point. Maybe you want to be famous for your talents or accomplishments, and again, that’s not a bad thing, especially if your accomplishments have improved the lives of others.

“I ask for glory to shine on my name”

This one is pretty vague, and I could probably just lump it in with “fame” above. Disney’s Hercules has a whole song about wanting to win fame and glory, and he’s a sympathetic hero too. Granted, he does have a character arc about learning what it means to be “a true hero,” but he isn’t treated as bad or selfish for just wanting to make a name for himself at first.

“I ask for love I can possess”

This is another completely normal and natural desire. I think the fact that it’s coming from an older woman makes it especially sympathetic. Maybe she’s a widow, or maybe she’s a lesbian who is unable to express her sexuality in a highly religious society, or maybe she’s just been unlucky in love and wants to find someone to be with before she dies. Note that “love” doesn’t have to be romantic either - though there’s nothing wrong with wanting romantic love specifically. The word “possess” can make this prayer sound selfish, as if the singer thinks of their loved one as a possession (the way Frollo does to Esmeralda), but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. I think it just means the person wants requited love - they want to love someone who loves them back. And again, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that - after all, for many people (not Quasimodo, obviously), unrequited love is worse than no love at all.

“I ask for God and his angels to bless me”

This one is so vague it’s basically just praying for good luck. Lots of people talk about having a “guardian angel,” and like the idea of a heavenly being looking out for them and seeing them through the hardships in their lives.

None of these prayers are for inherently bad things, and none of them come at the expense of others.

Now of course we’re meant to applaud Esmeralda for singing “I ask for nothing, I can get by/But I know so many less lucky than I”, even though she’s imprisoned in a cathedral. But this prayer doesn’t really make sense if God is supposed to be all-powerful. Prayers aren’t a zero-sum game - God can give Esmeralda her freedom and safety, and improve the fortunes of the “less lucky”, and give all those other people wealth/fame/glory/love/blessings/etc. And if Esmeralda doesn’t believe in an all-powerful God (as indicated earlier in the song), then why bother to pray at all? Besides, it’s not like everyone only gets one prayer per day - you can pray for as many things, and as many people, as you want. And I think it’s unfair and unreasonable to expect Esmeralda’s level of saintliness from an ordinary person.

I love this song, and the movie in general, but this has always bothered me. People shouldn’t be shamed for normal, healthy, benign desires, either in real life or in fiction.

[violethowler]

My VLD Meta Masterpost

Last Update: 05/27/2023

I’ve written a lot of Voltron analysis over the last few years but some of them are old enough that it’s getting harder for me to search for them whenever I want to either share them with others or go back and re-read what I wrote myself.

So I decided to put together a masterpost of links collecting every piece of analysis I’ve written about Voltron: Legendary Defender up to this point, both here on my main blog, and my sideblog @fandomoverflow​. This will contain links to both the posts I’ve written myself, as well as posts that I’ve reblogged and added my own commentary to. Some of the observations made in order analysis change as I learned new information or refined by interpretation of existing info, but I’ve left the original essays as is to preserve my thoughts at the time.

I’ll update this list whenever I post a new meta in the future, so for the sake of keeping this post easily organized, the links to my previous metas will be divided based on main topics, and then listed in the order I posted each one. 

Also, I didn’t really understand the importance of preserving fandom history until after Tumblr’s porn ban happened, so unfortunately almost all the meta I posted before Season 8 has been lost because I had a thing about deleting pre-season theories/meta after that season dropped, so anything I wrote before December 14, 2018 unfortunately only exists in people’s reblogs. But if any of my followers have any of my analysis/theories not on this list in their archives as a reblog, please feel free to DM me because I would love to add those to the list if I can find them. 

Every meta I’ve written that I still have a link to can be read under the cut, and the post will be updated when I have more links to add:

Character Analysis: Posts analyzing character arcs, parallels, and backstories based on the details canon gives us, and extrapolating how certain arcs were supposed to end based on the last minute edits to Season 8. 

Lotor Was the Reason for Everything: Analyzing Haggar’s motivations and why she’s so fixated on keeping Lotor under her thumb. (December 25, 2018)

Misdirection and Manipulation: Looking at Haggar’s methods as an antagonist and why she wasn’t directly involved in the invasion of Earth. (archived on AO3 on January 01, 2019)

A Speculative Analysis of Shiro, Haggar, and the Rift: my attempt to piece together what Haggar’s plan for Shiro as the Empire’s “greatest weapon” was based on the information the show gave us about her goals. (February 21, 2019)

My analysis of the parallels Lotor’s story has with Rosiu from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. (February 28, 2019)

The People’s Champion: Figuring out what happened to Shiro during his year in captivity based on the details the show gives us. (March 26, 2019)

Reblogged with further evidence found on rewatch (December 14, 2022)

My contributions to a conversation about the two Dayaks and their relationships with Lotor. (May 2, 2019)

Exiled Brat: Figuring out the details of what Lotor’s banishment looked like when he clearly still had power in the empire even before Season 3. (June 12, 2019)

Reasons Why Lotor Fans Continue to Defend Him: why I and other Lotor fans don’t believe he’s guilty of the things Romelle accuses him of. (July 1, 2019)

This Isn’t a Zero-Sum Game: An explanation of why the Paladins were willing to believe Romelle without question, and why their treatment of Lotor in Season 5 was not the heartless and inhumane torture that I saw many people post-Season 6 making it out to be. (July 2, 2019)

In Control at All Times: a comparison of how the leaders of different teams at various points in the series embody the stated attributes of a Black Paladin. (July 4, 2019)

The Winding Detour: an explanation of Shiro’s character arc over the course of the first 7 seasons. (July 13, 2019)

Highlands Poppy: An in-depth look at what the merging of the two Shiros represents. (August 22, 2020)

My take on the merging of the two Shiros from the perspective of a Kingdom Hearts fan. (September 15, 2020)

False Perception: Why Lance is not Sokka, and what his arc should have been had S8 not suffered from executive meddling. (February 27, 2021)

Inverted Mirror: My thoughts on Shiro and Sendak’s final fight in Season 7 and why Keith being the one to kill Sendak was narratively and thematically fitting (Originally written on tumblr pre-s8, then deleted. Rewritten from scratch on March 29, 2023).

Me, My Self, and I: An analysis of the Operation Kuron storyline, the lore surrounding Clone Shiro’s existence, and what it represents for Shiro’s character arc. (March 30, 2023)

Continuation in response to comments on the original post. (March 31, 2023)

Worldbuilding: Posts where I analyze the world of the series and what the show tells us about things like the structure of the Garrison or how Zarkon justified the Galra Empire’s constant expansion.

My observations/additions to a reblog chain analyzing the implications of modern vs ancient Galra designs. (October 7, 2018)

A new addition regarding how this could explain one of the show’s “Galra Keith” moments. (April 16, 2023)

The Keystone Army and the Cult of Personality: my observations on the Galra empire’s stability in terms of both leadership and infrastructure. (January 5, 2019)

My additions to a post and reblog about potential family relations among the command structure of the Galra Empire, where I speculate what this could mean regarding the two Dayaks in Seasons 6 and 8. (March 2, 2019)

Symbol of Hope: Voltron’s relationship with the Coalition and why the latter fell out of focus after Season 4. (originally written on tumblr pre-S8, then deleted. then remade from scratch and archived on AO3 April 3, 2019)

No News is Good News: Figuring out the timeline of when the Second Colony was shut down. (June 4, 2019)

An Updated Guide to the Timeline of VLD: My notes on the timeline of the show’s events (April 21, 2023

False Analogy: An analysis of why treating the Galra Empire as Space!Fire Nation does not work because the circumstances of how their respective wars began are completely different. (June 14, 2021)

A Guide to the Galaxy Garrison: A detailed breakdown of everything we know about the Garrison and what it tells us about how the organization operates. (June 20, 2021)

FreeVLDS8: Posts aimed at specifically analyzing the evidence of executive meddling in Season 8 (and Season 7) to determine what the original pre-meddled version would likely have looked like (largely inspired by the works of Team Purple Lion)

An explanation of the evidence that Lotor’s survival was cut from Season 8 for someone asking about how he died in a reblog of an AU comic. (March 11, 2019)

Alchemist’s and Paladins: my take on a blank spot in @leakinghate​‘s breakdown of the exec-ordered changes made to Season 8 where we know what was supposed to happen but not how it would’ve happened. (March 29, 2019)

Dea ex Machina: analysis of how the Paladins were supposed to have caught up to Honerva based on visual clues in previous seasons (May 27, 2019).

My summary of the patterns in how the words and behavior of cast/crew members in interviews points toward Season 8 being the disappointment it was because the IP owner forced the crew to change the story to sell toys and set up his ideas for a sequel, in which I get a little salty at the fact that much of the fandom refuses to believe it in favor of scapegoating the showrunners. (July 1st, 2019)

Cutting and Padding: analysis of how the changes to season 7 mentioned in leakinghate’s breakdown affected S7′s pacing (July 4, 2019)

Audience Surrogage: a theory about what role Romelle was supposed to play in Seasons 7-8 (July 6, 2019)

Patchwork Quilt: A sequel to Cutting & Padding where I specifically focus on the obvious visual signs of last-minute story changes in Season 7′s earth arc, and how it would have originally looked. (December 29, 2019)

A VLD Production Timeline: An outline of the show’s production process and when in that process the changes to Season 8 were made. (July 23, 2020)