#and i think that's an important distinction.

[xeemaee]

Okay so this is gonna have manga spoilers so please don’t read if you’re anime only and don’t want spoilers BUT:

My hot take is that I don’t think Kabru ever wants to kill Laios. There are definitely times where he thinks he has to because he’s so deeply afraid that Laios may accidentally or inadvertently create a similar situation with the dungeon on the island as what happened in Utaya, but we see him trying to convince Laios away from that path enough times without resorting to violence that (to me) it doesn’t read as actually wanting to kill him.

Like yeah we all make jokes about how Kabru wants to kill Laios, but I really think killing Laios is a ‘plan c’ option for him on how to prevent another situation like Utaya. He wasn’t the one to come up with the idea to kill him and he never attempted it either. I really don’t think he ever hated Laios at any point or wished death on him, he always thought he was fascinating and wanted to get to know him.

Here’s a guy who loves monsters (Kabru hates monsters) and he wants to know why this guy loves monsters (Kabru was told as a child he might be a monster) and he wants to be friends with this guy who loves monsters (he was told as a child he might be a monster).

And like, again, I love me a lil “haha kabru wants to kill laios” moment, but like… Kabru never actively wants Laios dead what he wants is to protect the island from a potentially horrible fate. I just feel like thats a pretty important distinction I don’t see as often as I expected. (And a distinction that surprised me when I read the manga)

[brucespringsteendotcom]

I don't actually know very much about Taylor Swift so take all of this with a grain of salt and also keep in mind I'm not claiming to be correct this is just what I think based on what I do know. Anyway

I really do think taylor swift has a level of insecurity about her vocals which you can kind of hear in the progression of her music; how she tried incorporating more complex ad libs into her final choruses on like reputation or whatever and she isn't doing that anymore which of course is down to the styles she's playing with lately and it becomes kind of a chicken-egg thing (is she doing that less because she's using different styles or is she using different styles so she can do that less) but I also think this is reflected in her emphasis on herself as a writer/storyteller and her pivot into less vocally-demanding genres. (Inhale) I also think you can hear this in her commitment to style over technique, leaning into diphthongs, making no effort to alleviate the tension she holds in her throat; it's a genius business strategy because there isn't anything generic about her voice. Her sound is distinctive and that helped her build and maintain her recognizability. I also think she has spent her career being scrutinized and criticized by people who are looking for her weak points, which of course her raw vocal ability IS a weak point (LET ME BE CLEAR I'm not saying she's a BAD singer I just think she doesn't have enough raw vocal talent to have built a career on pure vocals and I think she knows that. She has a lot of vocal strengths but that isn't what this post is about), and the feedback loop this eventually created is that she thought she had to look to her writing and lyricism to stand out as an artist, which has also been important to her success but I think recently she's pivoted wayyyy too far and is trying to completely rely on what she and other people think is her greatest strength when really it's not her greatest strength at all. Her greatest strength is in the ability to make a tight pop song with accessible progressions, concise hard-hitting lyrics that make no attempt at being overly poetic, and a STRONG MELODIC HOOK. She has abandoned even trying to compose an earworm and I think that's one of her biggest problems. We need to ban her from streaming platforms and make her reliant on getting on the radio again

[jaewul]

I'm pretty sure it has already been discussed, but the whole rapier thing in tlt that bothers me very much.

See, a rapier has an average weight of about 1kg (2.2 lb). I've had the occasion to play around with a VERY light one (about 700g I think) for about two hours last week and boy you do feel it after a while. The guy I was sparring with had a 1.5kg exemplary, which is not all that uncommon from what I've seen (it really depends on your size actually, you want your rapier to be proportional and I'm bite sized) (also it means that Gideon-sized rapier would be ridiculous in Harrow hands).

Anyway, a longsword has a weight ranging from 1 to 2kg, most exemplary being around 1.5kg. Now, there's a very important distinction between a rapier and a longsword : the longsword is used with both hands. I cannot understate what a difference it makes.

So it makes absolutely no sense to give a rapier to someone with 0 muscle, they will get less tired using a goddamn longsword.

(I think what happened is that Tamsyn Muir mixed rapier with foil (a very light sword for sport fencing weighing under 500g, 18oz, so basically a very long needle) and longsword with zweihander (the LONGEST sword, ranging from 2 to 4 kg, 4.4 to 8.8lb), but still, it's confusing)

[positivelybeastly]

So, some thoughts about X-Men '97.

On the whole, much happier with this episode than I was with episode 6, which felt disjointed - would have preferred they just spliced all of Lifedeath together instead of sacrificing emotional intensity the way they did by splitting it.

Bastion is a very effective, threatening villain - Operation: Zero Tolerance is a perfect pick for the evolution of the show, and it's nice to see some shades of future plotlines in play, especially wrt Scott.

I've already seen some people thinking that Hank's scene rejecting Trish is a harbinger of Dark Beast/X-Force Hank, and honestly, it just makes me roll my eyes, because Hank really isn't allowed to be anything other than perfect and optimistic and unwaveringly faithful to Charles' dream, is he?

Scott's allowed to go on TV and, in a moment of anger, tell the world that mutants are nothing like normal people, that humans are ungrateful assholes, and he's spitting truth; meanwhile, Hank expresses that he's no longer happy with merely being tolerated in a private conversation with a journalist with notoriously shady ethics, in the ruin of a nation that's just been through a mass genocide, and suddenly he's on the slide to being a fucking supervillain?

Miss me with this shitty double standard.

"Don't compromise your morals, Hank!" - he literally didn't? He's expressing a political opinion in the wake of a tragedy. Him being unwavering in his belief in humanity would just make him look like a fucking fool who's oblivious to the writing on the wall in that moment.

He didn't attack anyone, he didn't even tell Trish to get lost, he just took umbrage with the idea that he's tolerated and not accepted. For someone to whom precise use of language is important, that's not a small distinction.

It's pretty plain that all of this is building up to a moment where the X-Men have to cool the world down after Bastion stokes the fires of a mutant-human war with brainwashed Magneto on one side and the Genosha massacre on the other. If you don't show the heroes, particularly the especially positive, compassionate ones like Hank, being waylaid by doubt, then the season arc has no punch.

Fucking let Hank have emotions and moments of weakness, oh my god.

[scintillyyy]

actually. i was thinking, though. what exactly *is* the metric of a tim civilian friend. as in, what exactly makes a character tim's friend vs a kid he goes to school with who he happens to friendly with (because tim is generally friendly with everyone). what's the distinction?

and i think the answer falls on "does tim's civilian life and robin life intersect in a significant way around this character"

because, listen. we all know that tim is a compartmentalizer who tries to keep the ideas of "tim" & "robin" separate. however, we also know that it's not one or the other with tim--he's both. and the closer you're allowed to that narrative intersection of both tim & robin, the more the civilian in question can then be seen to have importance in *tim's* life and a reciprocation of friendship interest by tim.

because you think of the gotham heights high crew--not only does tim use his skills to investigate what's wrong with ives at one point (he got an embarrassing job), he's also used the W&W crew for unknowing assistance against the joker, hudson leads him to a case at one point, & he runs into a case whole hanging out with them to see a play at the park. despite tim's best effort to seperate parts of himself the close interactions of his other life to his friends is not just tim accepting friendship, but tim narratively showing friendship in return--they are narratively allowed to be a part of his life as robin though they'll never know it.

and the brentwood boys are no different. though they're not allowed the secret, their lives are affected and improved by tim as robin. as they give friendship, tim gives friendship in return. and when tim leaves his friendship and reunion with ives is marked by a case, the one with charaxes.

and even later, with zoanne, her life and relationship with tim is complicated by tim's life as robin, but she is allowed that narrative closeness to his life as robin, closeness to the entirety of his life. she even makes a cameo as having spoken to vicki vale about tim, and vicki's story during that era is finding proof of the hidden life of the batfam.

louis grieve is interesting because darla is the friend of the era who meets this metric--her life as a mob daughter is doomed to return tim to his true life. her resurrection as warlock's daughter is what intersects her with whole of tim's life, not just tim. and bernard surprisingly doesn't have any narrative markers that would indicate these kind of particularly close feelings from tim towards him--tim does not help him on a personal level with his personal life, there's, hm. like bernard does bring him the news of steph being robin, but there's really no personal intersection of *tim as robin* with bernard or because of bernard or for bernard. they do interact during the school shooting but it's no more personal than tim and the rest of the kids. in post-crisis, at least, the lack of tim's as robin having any sort of notable personal connection to bernard narratively indicates a fundamental distance between them where tim is not shown to have any significant personal investment in/towards bernard unlike all the other civilian friends. i would say bernard does make in on account of his presence at the school shooting, however when tim's true self is both robin & tim, for him to not have any significant personal narrative connection to the real tim, it does makes him a notable outlier among the civilian cast.

[romanceyourdemons]

i think an important point of distinction between nbc hannibal and the other various thomas harris adaptations is that in those previous adaptations the hannibal lecter actors have said yeah he’s a serial killer and he’s fucked in the head, he doesn’t realize what he’s doing is wrong, etc. but while nbc hannibal was in its early stages mads mikkelsen said i’m going to play hannibal as lucifer. the sexy man from the bible. and i think this change is the genesis of the fundamental tonal shift from a fact- and mystery-based story (as in previous adaptations) to an allegory-based one, and why thomas harris’s simultaneous horror of and fascination with transformation reads less as cartoonish trans- and homophobia and more like the tradition of 19th century gothic novels

[teambyler]

Stranger Things 5 speculation based on the episode titles and what we know from D&D

Vanishing of Holly Wheeler?

I already shared that I think Episode 2 is Holly Wheeler: "IF this information is accurate, I'm guessing the missing Wheeler is Holly. They have a new actress to play her. I think they're returning to s1 themes and the horror of a child being in danger is one thing they might get back to. The 1st episode would give them time to make her a character we care about. (And probably stabilize the situation at the end of s4.) It would also consume the entire Wheeler family into getting Holly back. Karen will be beside herself. Nancy will be tough and take charge. Will will have to unearth his memories of the Upside Down, and possibly use his connection, to help MIKE and NANCY get back their little sister. One possible road to BYLER is Will having to reexperience his trauma and possibly sacrifice himself to help his best friend."

Camazotz

I see a LOT of interest in episode 6 title "Escape from Camazotz"... I think for ANY speculation we HAVE to go to where our D&D nerds would go, which is the Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks in the 80s. Camazotz was published in Deities & Demigods for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1980). It is the "bat god," so we're probably going to see it tied to the demobats.

We learn from Deities & Demigods that the Aztec and Mayan gods have "inscrutable motives"... which is ON BRAND for the Cthulhu inspirations of Stranger Things. These gods come from a "parallel universe." Clerics "are the elite of the populace," and are able to cast "commune or gate spells" to connect the planes together. ("Will the Wise" has been the cleric of the party... perhaps he is a cleric?)

Also, these gods "unusual nature makes it impossible for them to travel on any planes but the ones that they have worshipers on." Maybe Vecna needed to have a host on the "Right Side Up", to take form here, which is very consistent with the s2 and s3 plotlines.

The clerics perform human sacrifices... maybe another theme in s5??

But perhaps JUST as important, the adventure D&D module Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan (1980) involved an ancient temple dedicated to Camazotz. Odds are that our heroes will be trying to escape from a "temple" within the Upside Down. According to the Wikipedia article about this adventure, it is "full of tricks and traps".

As a "tournament module," meaning for competition purposes, and it was EXPECTED that heroes died in it because it was so deadly. The goal "is to get out of the ruins before time runs out." The lower levels (where the heroes begin) have a poisonous gas that slowly kill them. Also it is very unstable, spells will cause a collapse. If El were caught in it, it might be dangerous to use her powers.

This adventure debuted the gibbering mouther, a very distinct D&D monster that is VERY reminiscent of the s3 Flayer and would be VERY on-theme for Stranger Things:

The Sorcerer

Also, Episode 5 is titled "The Sorcerer." Sorcerer was not a class yet in D&D in the late 1980s. (The idea that Sorcerers have innate arcane power versus Wizards who study magic, was not invented yet until 2000.) Sorcerer was one of the many titles that Magic Users had (next to Wizard). Sorcerers had less power than Wizards. They were 9th level, while Wizards were 11th level:

It is already established that El is "the Wizard." Maybe there's another person with powers in season 5 which are less developed? If so, the most logical choice would be Will. It's confirmed that this season will focus on him. Although he's a "cleric" in their D&D game, maaaaybe he finds out he has new abilities. There was a reason Vecna didn't kill in season 1, and who has had "truesight" since.

That's what I can find for now! There's a lot of interesting traps and puzzles, with illustrations, from the adventure. But it's hard to predict what else (if anything) they might borrow from it! The aspect of escaping, and the poison gas and the timer, are probably what we can most rely on!

P.S. I mainly blog about Byler, but I thought my D&D knowledge would be useful for this one. If interested, follow and read my blog! I have so much to say!

[arminreindl]

The NEW Ultrastenos and its Ironic History

So those that have been keeping up with my posts on mekosuchines might recall the name Ultrastenos, as I've talked about this genus back in August of last year. If you've read that post you might also remember how I highlight at multiple points that a lot of the info was tentative on the basis that Ultrastenos was highly incomplete and that close relatives awaited description.

You may also remember "Baru" huberi, a small mekosuchine that lived roughly around the same time, clearly distinct from Baru yet at that point still unnamed. Oh, how I wished for the former to get more material and for the latter to recieve a proper genus assignment.

My now outdated reconstructions for "Baru" huberi (the small one in the left image) and Ultrastenos (right image)

And then the monkey's paw curled.

As it turns out....they are the same damn animal. Now, back when "Baru" huberi was described, Willis also named a bunch of other mekosuchines from the same locality (the White Hunter Site of the Riversleigh WHA) and described even more material that remained unnamed, including the White Hunter Cranial Form 1. Now, when Ultrastenos was named in 2016, the type material was from the Low Lion Site (also Riversleigh), but importantly, the skull tables identified as WHCF1 were also assigned to the genus (and were the basis for my reconstruction).

Well, re-examination has shown that the WHCF1 and the holotype of "Baru" huberi aren't just a single species.....THEY ARE A SINGLE INDIVIDUAL.

Given the fact that the assignment of the skull table to the Low Lion Ultrastenos material still holds up, this means that Ultrastenos willisi and "Baru" huberi are a single taxon. Which consequently requires some reshuffling of the names.

"Baru" huberi was named first, so the species name takes priority and continues being used. However, since it was never given a genus name, Ultrastenos does stay valid. Except now it's called Ultrastenos huberi, not Ultrastenos willisi. A name that has aged like milk. Back in 2016 it was proposed that Ultrastenos had a very narrow snout (thus the name), so now that we know that the rostrum was flat and mesorostrine, the name really is just wrong.

So next up, lets examine what went wrong.

As I said before, Ultrastenos was fragmentary, so that certainly played a big part in it. But the team in charge of describing the animal still cited several lines of thinking to support their interpretation, most of which are now thoroughly debunked.

As an example, the lower jaw was rather shallow, however while this was initially taken as evidence for longirostry, the 2024 paper states that this only an argument against altirostry (a deep skull), not against a more generalized condition. The teeth were also initially used as evidence, citing their homodont condition (the teeth looked uniform), HOWEVER, the problem in that was that there were only a few teeth present, all of which notably do not bear any resemblance to the needle-like teeth seen in other long-snouted taxa. Another important clue initially taken to mean longirostry was the orientation of the quadrate area and the seemingly sudden constriction of the lower jaw. But the quadrate area was not found in articulation and would support a generalized skull form if simply rotated a little, while the constriction of the mandible appears to at least be partially exaggerated by preservation.

Of course, the fact that we now have proper material of the snout makes the interpretation of a generalized skull shape a lot more solid.

Image 1: The left and right halves of the mandible of Ultrastenos compared to that of Baru iylwenpeny (D), note how the right half is a lot more straight. Image 2: The initial reconstruction of the quadrate area of Ultrastenos compared to one that is slightly rotated Image 3: The revamped skull reconstruction by Yates and Stein

The size of the animal does stay relatively unaffected by these new discoveries. "Baru" huberi has been estimated at only around 1.5 meters in length and my own scaling of Ultrastenos got up to 2 meters, which seems to be in line with what is still assumed for this animal. So among aquatic mekosuchines, its still rather small.

There are however some interesting implications for mekosuchines at large. Now that we no longer have a longirostrine member of this family, one has to wonder, why is that? Well, there might be several reasons.

It could be that the types of environments that were present in Cenozoic Australia simply didn't support such animals. Even in the type description, its been noted that the Riversleigh isn't exactly known for its fish remains, leading to the idea that Ultrastenos might have gone for other small vertebrates like frogs. Hell, the ecology of Baru might suggest that the reason that this genus was so robust might tie to the fact that the local bodies of water just weren't deep enough to allow the typical crocodilian grab-and-drown tactic.

Competition might have been another factor. In environments that may have been more suitable for such morphology, mekosuchines might have been beaten to the punch by other types of crocodilians. Harpacochampsa for example, tho originally thought to be a mekosuchine, is now more often regarded as either an unrelated crocodile or a gharial and its very possible that it filling the nische of a longirostrine simply meant that mekosuchines didn't have the opportunity to expand into that space. Same goes for Gunggamarandu in the Pliocene and Pleistocene and Freshwater Crocodiles from the Pleistocene onwards. (Tho it should be noted that both Harpacochampsa and Gunggamarandu are so fragmentary that their snout shape is technically unknown).

Images: Gunggamarandu (Eleanor Pease), Harpacochampsa (ArtbyJRC) and Freshies (Antoni Camozzato) might have been key factors in why mekosuchines never evolved slender snouts.

Finally, its also possible that something in the growth of mekosuchines simply prevents them from evolving longirostrine skulls, which Yates and Stein liken to alligatoroids (notably the closest alligatoroids got to traditional longirostry as seen in gharials is the Rio Apaporis Caiman, and even that one is closer to some extant crocodiles in its morphology).

Whatever the case, I for one mourn the loss of our long-snouted Ultrastenos. Tho as a note for any paleoartists, there is not a single illustration of this new interpretation since nobody ever drew "Baru" huberi either. Wink wink nudge nudge

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasteno

Ultrastenos revised (palaeo-electronica.org)

[commsroom]

i think there's something to be said about what exactly it means to be "non-human" in a story that is as much about humanity as wolf 359 is, where even the dear listeners are defined less by their own perspective and more by what they fail to understand and therefore reflect about the human perspective - to the point that they don't even have their own voices or faces or identities that aren't either given to them or taken from humans. they speak to humanity as a mirror.

even pryce and cutter are "very much humans" - pryce defined by her resentment of and desire to transcend its limitations, and cutter by his aspirations to redefine and create a "better" type of human - and find the idea that they might not be human laughable. it's interesting that they have distinctly transhumanist aspirations when their goal is the narrative opposite of common science fiction fears: that we will expand the definition of humanity so much that we'll lose whatever it is that makes us human. pryce and cutter's transhumanism narrows the definition of humanity to the worthy and the useful, as defined by them; "there will still be a humanity; it'll just be our humanity."

in direct opposition to that, i think it's meaningful that the show instead expands the definition of humanity in ways that include lovelace and hera, who in another show with different themes might be considered (in the descriptive, non-moralistic sense) non-human. i will always make a point of saying that personhood and humanity are two often-related but meaningfully distinct concepts, especially when talking about sci-fi and fantasy. i am talking about humanity.

the question of how hera identifies, and what social pressures influence that, is a complicated one. i've talked about it before and i will talk about again. what's important for the purposes of this post is that i think the show considers her fundamentally human. think about her role in shut up and listen - consider jacobi's lion example and the concept of different paradigms - that even things that are close to humans, comparatively speaking, understand the world in different ways. whatever differences hera may have from the others, it's primarily in experience, not fundamental understanding. she shares their emotions, their concerns, their values, their thought patterns. she has an appreciation for music, which the show considers a hallmark of humanity. she fits within the framework of humanity as the show defines and is, in her own words, left feeling "uneasy" about how difficult it might be to communicate with beings who don't. and it's significant that this takes place in shut up and listen, of all episodes, specifically because the way she is clearly and unambiguously included in the show's understanding of what it means to be human highlights the ways she and lovelace are othered by eiffel's careless comments that suggest otherwise.

(i don't want to get too into these details for this particular post, but it's worth noting that hera will refer to 'humans' as a category, often when she is upset and feeling isolated, but has never said that she 'isn't human' - she has never been upset that people are treating her 'too' human. i've seen it said about the line "you need to get it through your heads that what goes for you doesn't always go for me", but that's a frustration related to ability and safety, not identity. far more often, she will refer to herself in 'human' terms - referring idiomatically to experiences or body parts etc. that she doesn't literally have - and is upset primarily with comments referring to her status as an AI. it does not diminish how being an AI influences her perspective and experience, but again, so much of that is in terms of ability that it feels almost inseparable from a discussion about disability.)

lovelace's humanity and hera's humanity are so interlinked and directly paralleled in the text that i think it's impossible to really argue one of them is "not" human without making implications about the other. in desperate measures, lovelace tells kepler he's "not human" and he responds "you're hilarious. on a multitude of levels." later, defending lovelace against kepler's repeated dehumanization, hera very pointedly uses the phrase "that woman." in out of the loop, hera says she's never met anyone who "worked so hard at being inhuman" as jacobi, who says "what do you know about being human?" hera very emphatically responds, "i know plenty." later, defending hera against jacobi's repeated dehumanization, minkowski pointedly uses the phrase "that woman." with the care taken towards language and the way scenes and turns of phrase will parallel each other, that's not a coincidence. it might seem strange to have the "non-human" characters be the ones to express criticisms based on perceived "humanity" (something hera will do in other contexts as well - "we don't have funerals for animals" etc.) but in the broader context of the show, i think it's the point.

so, whether hera would ever call herself human, or be comfortable with that, is a complicated question for another time and depends on a lot of other factors. but wolf 359 is a show about humanity, it includes her within its definition of what it means to be human, and i wouldn't be comfortable definitively saying she's not human because of that. it can't be a neutral statement within the particular context of this show.

[sparksandstarsandstories]

@garecc and I are having an argument so weigh in

[starry-bi-sky]

idle clone^2 food for thought (cw gun tw murder) and. thinking about how danny in canon is very protective of his people. and as a collective fanon we like to make him go Batshit when his people are severely injured.

and im just mmmmm,,,,, danny would kill if damian (or anyone in his family) got extremely hurt. but only under very specific circumstances. like they've been backed up into a corner and can't get out and it's either kill or be killed. like his go-to is non-lethal force but then someone takes out his little brother, whose breathing but not getting up and hurt badly, and there's nowhere for them to escape and these guys are gonna do much worse soon.

but there's a gun nearby and within danny's reach, and the guys who have them trapped are gloating and only half-paying attention because what are they going to do now? they have him trapped.

and they hurt his little brother.

and danny doesn't see red. everything just goes into cold, static focus instead. and he puts a bullet through the stomach of the first guy he sees.

And i'm just picturing Danny with this stone cold fury on his face, his hands shaking, as he looks the main guy (who know he's a clone) in the eye and says "your first mistake was thinking i'm batman"

[alltheshadesofamber]

I need people to understand that Jason doesn’t kill because he was trained by assassins to do so, Jason was trained by assassins because he wanted to kill

[theartichokesarepurple]

very big fan of pictures like this:

[artsyunderstudy]

Bonus points for reblogging this with an extensive breakdown of who you chose and why.

[gamchawizzy]

GIVE ME YOUR EYES

[gammija]

there's a certain thing that often happens with podcasts as they mature and get better sound design, which is that they try to convey more information through it rather than dialogue. which, every time it happens, is a bit of a slippery slope, because a *thud* could be any number of things, and usually isnt by itself enough to convey the scene. Only if you know what you're supposed to hear does it seems obvious

unrelatedly when i heard the Bonzo scene before reading the transcript i visualized him slowly crawling out of an old TV-set ring-girl style