#Analyzing some stuff

[artheresy]

This is for science, if one were to one to observe what was present in each individual version of Honkai Star Rail so far, like isolating what was added each addition, does anyone know a good place for looking at that kind of thing?

Even if it's just like a wiki format where it mentions what version it was added

[toxictoxicities]

here ya go

suns outright states that pebbles considers them a mentor figure

Yeah exactly! With Suns being a mid mentor and well- the weight of ppl lookin up to them I do reckon for Emergence Suns having that even ground and eventually that responsibility lifted off their shoulders would be a relief-

Or that they become a better mentor for Pebbles though just in the distance helping out here and there! Because then Pebs gets the independence as he wanted but also like a "hey look, I've done this" to get some validation from older iterators! Something I think Pebbles would need.

[malewifefirestar]

“There is no wrong way to consume media”

Yes there is and it’s what ever matpat has been doing

[fumifooms]

Kaka compilation

Because everyone is sleeping on him. Witness his greatness!! First two Kaka colored icons were colored by me, lineart by Ryoko Kui though!

Kaka & Kiki are kinda like Laios & Falin… Kaka being stoic and giving repressed energy like early Laios, Kiki being cryptic and always smiling and kinda soft-looking. Autism siblings 2, ostracized and othered as kids and have a deep bond due to sticking together through it all, though unlike with Laios their parents are very loving so Kaka developed family as a big value more than Laios (bc asides for Falin Laios doesn’t care much about it).

In the gnome festival comic you can see Kaka is more emotive than he seems! Full with a :3 face, and he’s the one crying at the end. He’s insecure about his legs and being tall… It really got to him. Conceal don’t feel. In the gnome festival comic you also see him sensing others’ gaze on him and that something is off unlike Kiki, again Laios-like in the way that judgement from others gets to him more than her.

[civetfish]

Nerd-to-nerd communication

Something super pointless and self-indulgent I've had on the backburner for a while. I love trying to make the pieces they gave us fit together!

Al-AN and Robin would absolutely bond over learning about each other's biology. I could talk about this forever but I'll get into all of the headcanons I have for these two in another post eventually

Below the cut is another version with some extra bits and pieces and the transcription

Transcript :

Architect Anatomy A. Architect "Brain" - Doesn't "store" information so much as allow for easy communication with the network B. Brainstem - connects the information received to the central nervous/circulatory system C. "Heart" - Circulatory system pumps the bioluminescent fluid to other organ systems and surface veins. Each node connects to a vast vasculature network D. "Kidneys" - Organs that filter the bioluminescent "blood" and other bodily fluids, absorbing and distributing collected material E. Nerve Center - Receives raw sensory data and filters it. Filtering can be unconscious or intentional

F. "Respiratory" Tract - Intakes gases or liquids and filters out material for use. Disposes of waste on exhale. Provides cooling to internal systems

The respiratory tract functions less like a set of lungs and more akin to a computer's cooling system, with the ability to absorb material from the environment to use in other parts of the body. It also would likely help the architect's body analyze the environment it is currently exposed to on a molecular level. It is also truly unidirectional, with the intake vents near the "collarbone" and the exhaust vents on both sides of the abdomen

The architect organ cache in-game felt like it was definitely not a complete model of the internal organs, so I wanted to come up with something to fill some more space. I also just really liked the idea of Al-An being capable of something similar to breathing, without having a respiratory system in the traditional sense. Feel free to use any of this in your own headcanons if you would like :)

BONUS - a gif of all the layers!

[leolaroot]

star trek fans specifically are crazy for that. you say "im not really comfortable watching tos because of the way captain kirk interacts with women" and 900000 people come crawling oit of the woodwork to say UM ACTUALLY kirk is a GENTLEMAN FEMINIST who is ALWAYS NICE and VERY BISEXUAL! and the only people who think he acts like that are the DUMB PIG CHAUVINIST MEN who think kirk is LIKE THEM! okay im actually referring to how he constantly grabs at women esp when they're unhappy and physically restrains them. or the weird sexually charged comments he makes. or his persistent assumption of all women as available and simple things to be acquired or controlled. and sometimes they lobby back with the "well Its Made In The Sixties so of course its Dated but its still PROGRESSIVE!" okay well its so dated that im not comfortable. i cant just say to myself "oh well it was another time" and immediately become blind to whats happening before my eyes.

[chubs-deuce]

Okay but Charlie angrily ranting to Alastor is like

Fanfic come to life

Not trusting him but also totally trusting him enough to express her feelings. I know she expresses her feelings to like... everyone haha, but being fully aware HOW Alastor is and still going "Imma pour my heart out to this man about all this stress I'm going through even tho I'm angy"

RIGHT

I'm not gonna lie, I was so genuinely shocked to see just how close that scene got to what fics have been writing them like for years???

The difference between the two however is that in fics we usually know what exactly his goals are, or at least have an inkling of an idea sdkjhsdkjfh

Right now, we are technically clueless, maybe the Lilith-sent-him theory is true and this genuinely is for Charlie's greater good?

But I do think it's way more likely that he's subtly priming her to strike a deal... That's at least where the vibe seems to be atm.

I'm thinking maybe this could also be a thing where Lilith is actually the one pulling the strings and just lets Alastor be the tool through which her plan is executed?

The way things are going, and with the other teaser fragments we have, it seems like heaven and hell will be gearing up for a full on rebel war of some kind - something Lilith has (if my memory serves me right) been vaguely implied to strive for in the past, and it also tracks with her apparent introductory dislike of subservience.

EDIT: I have been informed that the string-puller could apparently also be Eve perhaps??? God I can't fucking wait to see how all of that unfolds

[finisnihil]

I feel like we as a fandom have misunderstood Jingliu a little bit. Like, she's usually characterized by fanon as like this stern, serious, no-nonsense woman who never smiles and has no humor when that's very much... Not the case?

Like yeah we usually see her with this very cold and stoic attitude but ultimately it's born out of two things: Focus and Mara.

Before the mara, we usually see her in situations where discipline and seriousness is needed. Training young Jing Yuan for military work, steeling herself to kill a mara-infected friend, etc. Those are situations where you need to be focused and on guard.

Post-mara meanwhile, it's literally canon that the mara feeds on emotions and memories. She keeps her's under control using the blindfold and Luocha, but fluctuations in her emotions can make her lose control. Blade is the same way too, when he's not in a situation related to his past he's just kinda chilling, because with Kafka's help, he can keep his emotions and memories under control.

There are times we see Jingliu unwind, like in Ichor of Two Dragons, where when Dan Heng remembers them all drinking together, Jingliu playfully goes "want a rematch? I'm always available!" at Jing Yuan teasing Yingxing and Dan Feng for being sore about losing to her in a match. She's passionate about swords because its her hobby, she enjoys it, that's one of her main parallels with Yanqing.

She isn't some cold and unfeeling monster, she was a woman who lost everything she loved and then lost her humanity. Blade was lucky he was found by the Stellaron Hunters, who see him as human even when he sees himself as just a weapon and try to be gentle and compassionate with him because they care about him. Jingliu had to run after Jing Yuan nearly killed her and wandered by herself for centuries, in pain and lashing out like a wounded animal, until she met Luocha.

We don't see much of Luocha and her dynamic. She sees him at the reunion and says "Take this man away" sure, but she follows it up with "This does not involve him". This is a situation with people who could make her Mara flare. She could be harsh with him because she doesn't care for him or because she's trying to protect him. Maybe she just can't extend the energy to worry about Luocha while trying to keep herself and the situation under control.

Jingliu was a kind woman and if Blade can continue to extend little forms of kindness and love with the SHs, I think she can also care about Luocha just as much. They are in this together for better or worse, and she has to put some trust and faith in him to let him accompany her this far. I'm sure we'll see more of their dynamic going forward, but it's clear she looks upon Luocha with understanding and sympathy, because as she says in one of her voicelines, he's like her and they're both lost and lonely people finding solace in each other in some way.

The overall point is, I wish there was more Jingliu content where we see her laugh, smile, and reach out for somebody because she wants to experience human warmth and connection again.

She wasn't always the mara.

[mickeym4ndy]

u ever see a shameless opinion u disagree so hard with but u don’t have the energy for the discourse so u just take a breath scroll past and get on with ur day

[the-converse-high-top]

Another Käärijä Research Project

aka: käärijä style-shifting project

as a preface, here are my (non) qualifications for this project and the circumstances under which it happened:

I am a linguistics student, and this past semester I took a course on sociolinguistics. the goal of this project was to become familiar with the concept of and analyze style-shifting (it's more commonly known as code-switching online but theres a difference and this is style-shifting), specifically by analyzing the speech of one person. We had the option to study oprah or to have someone else approved by my prof, so you know I had to ask my prof if I could study jere. This project is solely my intellectual property; even though I had a tutor help me a lot, everything written in this paper and on this post was my work alone.

now, on to the actual findings! the full paper and transcripts will be linked at the end :D

the actual variables (words or sounds) that I studied were the pronunciation of r, and use of the word "the".

to make things a lot easier from the get-go, i'm going to introduce you all to one of my favorite websites, ipachart.com (the international phonetic alphabet [ipa] chart is a big chart with an entry for every sound that exists in a language. this handy dandy website has an audio recording for each one of those sounds).

go to this website, and then scroll down to the table. go to the column labeled "post alveolar" and then click on ɾ and ɹ. those are the sounds i studied in this paper! ɾ is the finnish r and ɹ is the american r :)

so basically what i did to find instances of my variable was i just looked up a bunch of esc interviews and listened out for use of the different r sounds. i also transcribed the entire dinner date live because i love torture apparently :) the specific interviews and lives/stories are in the bibliography of the paper :p

after i transcribed all the interviews and lives/stories i went through and highlighted every instance of the r sound. then i calculated the ratios of ɾ to ɹ based on the context they were spoken in. the two contexts i looked for were formal contexts (sit-down interviews) and informal contexts (literally anything else).

i found that jere uses ɹ WAY more often in formal contexts than he does in informal contexts, and the same in reverse with ɾ.

i then went back to the transcripts and looked for all instances of the word "the". i also looked for instances where i thought it should be present, but was omitted. i calculated the ratio of present vs omitted "the"s in formal vs informal contexts and made some charts.

the graph with the smaller black section is "use of 'the' in formal settings" and the one with the smaller green section is "use of 'the' in informal settings" (the images are transparent, sorry)

i found that jere uses "the" WAY more often when in formal settings! there were also some instances where he added a "the" where it was unnecessary, which is studied at length in this wonderful paper by @alien-girl-21

something i also noticed that i elected not to study because this paper took enough energy on its own was that in formal contexts, whenever the "or" sound came in the middle or at the end of a word, jere wouldn't pronounce the r. it stuck out to me mostly because i heard words like "performance" turning into "perfomance", which i thought was an interesting quirk.

unfortunately i was somewhat limited by both my brainpower and capacity to do more work on this paper in the relatively short timeframe i was given (2 weeks) and the fact that i was given a 5 page MAX for this paper (not including a bibliography). i had a lot of fun doing this though and am definitely planning on studying jere for for academic credit again in the future if given the chance!

also i would like it to be known that i spent an hour searching for that 5 second clip of the urheilucast where jere said that he used to sell kitchens and understands english better than he can speak it.

link to a google drive folder with the actual paper i wrote and the transcripts of the interviews with notation:

please feel free to send me asks and dms with questions or comments about this paper! i absolutely love rambling about linguistics :3!!

[an-organism]

something something alicent + rhaenyra gravitating towards each other at their lowest and rejecting each other when they feel secure/empowered (leaks mention below oop)

e2 sept scene rhaenyra has just lost a son, unable to rely on daemon, marginalized by her advisors, can’t help but be drawn to an alicent who’s still committed to carving out a space for herself as queen, having the first consensual sex of her life, feeling redeemed by viserys’s ’last words’ and aegon’s smooth-ish ascension - alicent doesn’t need rhaenyra, and rejects her.

e8 dragonstone scene alicent is completely disillusioned with her place in the red keep, has lost all control/influence she thought she had (including over her sons), probably at least a little bit suicidal, can’t help but appeal to a rhaenyra who’s just been entirely vindicated by the success of the dragonseeds, a religious awakening, and daemon’s recommitment at harrenhal (also riding the high of giving regular mad top to a pretty girl who thinks she looks cool with a strap sword) - rhaenyra doesn’t need alicent, and rejects her.

they try and fill that absence to the extent they can but when all else fails, they’re each other’s last resort!! which ofc only makes you wonder what happens when they’re both feeling powerless, and maybe also in close proximity again - living in the same building, even! perhaps in such a way where one of them has free access to the other at all times? ….. i wonder when that could be 😜

[catwomanofzolar]

<people who take the time to understand ocean's character rather than just immediately hating her3

[fumifooms]

his flower...

Aww, from the signing doodle board and the Adventurer’s Bible long illustration… He likes flowers he likes shells, just a guy and his flower he picked from the side of the road, what’s not to love. Nature lover boy…

[in-this-essay-i-wont]

I’m gonna get back into welcome home in a sec I promise BUT I HAVW NO MOUTH WND I MUST SCREAM-

There’s a big debate abt it getting popular and known by ppl on tiktok (derogatory) and ppl misinterpreting AMs insanity and motives, like ppl saying “well he’s pure evil he’s just horrible and awful ” HE IS! DONT GET ME WRONG HE DOES CRAZY TERRIBLE SHIT OK! But! I feel like often people tend to overlook the methods and reasons to his madness, his insanity.

And I feel like the main point of the media is social commentary to a degree, like yeah humans r gonna destroy themselves with tech we get it, but there’s also a point of how a robot could feel when it gets intelligent to the point of sentience. It’s about AMS FEELINGS!!!! HOW HE COPES WITH SENTIENCE!!! THATS LIKE THE BIG POINT THAT EVERY ITERATION OF THIS STORY MAKES🗣️🗣️🗣️ that’s the REASON for the story’s existence at all, is that a robot went mad with JEALOUSY for the human experience, and destroyed humanity because he could never be apart of the world he was thrust into by human hands.

And I feel like that’s a big point that ppl miss abt this, like AMS feelings and how a robot copes with being unable to experience reality the same way humans can, and how the feeling that a robot could have is jealousy instead of disgust for humanity, driving him mad.

Of course I’m gonna have a bias for a robot character that expresses how painful it is to be fundamentally different from all the others he can see around him, I’m autistic, but like HE SAYS IT IN THR MEDIA GUYS JUST LISTEN TO HIM-

[solradguy]

I'm so grateful that the only GG fans that care about the light novels are the ones that can be normal about things because Lightning the Argent goes from the rawest scenes of carnage imaginable to Ky Kiske doing something mildly religious like offering a short, silent, prayer for someone that got mangled to death by WMD dragons, and I just know that, in the wrong hands, those brief religious moments would generate the most annoying goddamn memes you could ever imagine

[caiusmarciuscoriolanus]

While I do love the meta and discussions this show has stirred up, I do think that there are alot of fans of the show that are in a constant state of over intellectualizing the content to the point where it loses it’s integrity as simply just a story that is being told. I definitely think that analysis and critique of media is definitely important, but please don’t get so wrapped up that you forget to enjoy what is actually playing out in front of you as a whole. At the end of the day, it’s a journey from point a to b and a story is being told. You spend too much time trying to consume and chew and chew and chew and suck every bit of flavor you can get, you’ll have forgotten the actual taste when the meal is done. What a waste 🤷🏻‍♂️