#blame! liveblog

[uncontrollablesphere]

Here’s a post I forgot about in my drafts for two years on Blame! coelacanth semantics. Keep in mind I haven’t read blame since then so I’m not sure how accurate some of the details are

vvvvvvvv

Follow up to my coelacanth metaphor post: some literal implications of Dhomochevsky having a pet coelacanth

I’m not super sure about the reliability of using it as a time marker, just because the coelacanth is so mysterious, but so are Dhomo and Iko. When those two are first created as provisional safeguards, the fish is already there, flopping on the floor. At the time Blame! was written, coelacanths were thought to live for around 50 years, which is kind of a lot for fish, but not so much for humans (and especially not for safeguards). But coelacanths aren’t born five feet long. That coelacanth is already adult size.

Unless the coelacanth is some kind of silicone coelacanth (silicanth?), this would limit Dhomo and Iko’s careers as provisional safeguards to less than 50 years (or 100, if we take into account modern coelacanth research that Nihei didn’t have access to). The reason I’m kind of iffy about this is just that the coelacanth’s existence this high above “ground level” (when we don’t even know the state of the oceans, and coelacanths usually live far below surface level) is super suspect, and I can’t rule out that it’s not a normal fish.

Who put it there? Did it belong to a former resident of the unofficial stratum and the silicone life attack(s) destroyed its tank, where Dhomo and Iko just happened to get deployed? Was it created along with them for some reason? Coelacanth safeguard?

I had some other thoughts about what it might represent but they flew out of my head as I was typing this. Like other than the individual lifespan of coelacanths, we know that they have existed for about 400 million years. It’s really interesting that this is one of the few nonhuman animals we see in blame. Iirc, we only see bugs, a dog, and a coelacanth. Bugs are known for being resilient and thriving in urban environments*, while dogs have evolved alongside humans and will continue to as long as we value them as companions and/or working partners.

But coelacanths don’t really make sense in this environment at all. They’re naturally found in deep underwater caves, and are poorly suited to living in tanks (growing up to 6 and a half feet). In a megastructure that reaches so high up as to consume neighboring planets, it seems like maintaining a tank for just one coelacanth would be a huge challenge, just in terms of filling it with water, let alone a tank with multiple coelacanths in order to have them breed and keep the species going. (I assume people in upper strata collect rainwater, as pumping water from ground level or below doesn’t seem feasible. And even if they do pump water from below…all for some fish?)

It would be one thing if coelacanths were farmed as a food source, but that’s not really feasible either, as coelacanths take a really long time to reach sexual maturity, have 5 year long gestation periods, and are difficult for people to digest.

Humans have been around a long time in the Blame! universe…Noise adds at least 3000 years to our current 300,000. But in evolutionary time, that’s still infinitesimally small. That’s nothing to the coelacanth’s 400 million. When you juxtapose a living fossil with a relatively young species such as humans, there’s a couple different directions that could take

*I now know this is literally not true, applies to SOME bugs only, many bugs are in fact declining due to habitat loss from urban sprawl + monoculture farmland. Anyways

[troublemakergalaxy]

their fucking faces i cant

[edensgaia]

Subz telling them to got to bed because they're gonna wake up to 500 Wardens anyway

Subz said they could hunt him down, kill him, destroy his base, and it wouldn't matter because he already has all the nametags and that this is a test run and he could drop 2K Wardens much faster next time. Something something "Kill me if u want me to stop blowing up spawn" Something something "I own spawn and killing me is not gonna make me stop."

The way Bacon is asking if all the times he and Subz talked Subz was already working on the Wardens thing, the same way Flame had already planned to blow up spawn when he was comforting Zam for getting an accidental kill and asked what he would do if spawn got destroyed.

The way Subz wants people to get mad at him so he can get banned, the same way Mane wanted people to get mad at him so they would really try to kill him, even if the way they want people to be mad and react to it is different.

It's people being determined to stop and outlast someone whos way too op—it's Zam genuinely enjoying the last arc and being so determined even when they're biggest attempt at killing Mane failed—It's Derap really liking the direction of this new arc even though he's been online for more than 16 hours now and still wanting to be friends with Subz outside of content and only being upset about the fact Subz wants to leave the server.

Its the way everything looks kinda hopeless and the only way to stop them is doing something that sounds basically impossible (killing one of the best players/letting Subz go...), and at the end of the day even if Mane died to a claymore realistically he still had to make the decision to stop blowing up spawn, despite the fact everyone's efforts didn't go exactly to plan. It's how even after all Mane did, Kab still saw something good in him even though they were the one who suffered the most from it, the same way Bacon and Derap still like Subz and care about him even if he's doing all that and is not really the super social type

[itsbebebrainrotting]

Who knew that if you stuck sneeg and pangi in a get along shirt for 3 days theyd end up flirting

[mandareeboo]

Vaggie's life is wild. Girl went from a heavenly supersoldier to sleeping in the same bed as her gf before marriage in three years. She VAULTED those trauma hurdles.

[paddysol]

actualy so upset that so many people clearly wanted to talk to zam and hang out and none of them got te opportunity

[th3-c0ll3ct3r]

I genuinely cannot believe that 2024 ONLY HOPE OF REDEMPTION is Minecraft YouTubers pet picture

[pixiecaps]

SOBBING joke made the grandma the dumplings since she cant leave the hospital…. joke has spent more time with her than jack has… joke has swallowed his pride twice and asked his dad for help for jacks benefit… this episode is destroying me

[djevelbl]

DONT TALK TO ME UNLESS YOURE BRINGING GOOD NEWS ABOUT PILIZAM BC I DECIDE I WONT WATCH ONE (1) FUCKING STREAM AND THEYRE ON THE DIVORCE ARC SUDENLY FUCK MY STUPID KINNIE BAKA LIFE OR WHATEVER

[nugulover69]

Even when he's been freed from the pear wiggler, Hanto continues to get pear wiggled

*Rakia voice* I would simply not get emotionally manipulated and have functioning eyeballs. baka

[psychopomp-namine]

the thing about venti is that he doesn't embody freedom so much as he nurtures it. venti is who he is today because the people taught him to love and he returned that tenfold. the people were the first to teach him autonomy and freedom, and his response is to protect that ideal

I just really love mondstadt's relationship with their "absentee" archon a lot. there's something almost poetic about how just by being themselves, they sort of "created" their own god. a wind wisp became their archon by observing and living with them (ofc I'm oversimplifying it)

as described in freedom sworn, it's the anemo archon who actually takes on his region's characteristics, not the other way around. it is not that mondstadt is the nation of freedom because of venti, but that venti is the god of freedom because of mondstadt. and now you have that same archon asking what I will argue is actually the best quote of genshin, "what is freedom when demanded of you by a god?"

[thegreenleavesofspringinsunlight]

I am once again trying to finish The Mummy. Why am trying to finish The Mummy. I don't even like this movie. And I just got jumpscared.

[squeakyleftsneaker]

WHY IS ALMOST EVERY WOMAN IN THIS SHOW IS EITHER A GRAND CORRUPTING INFLUENCE OR EXISTS IN SERVICE OF SOME FUCKING MAN I HATE IT

SHOW GIVES ME SUCH BEAUTIFUL WOMEN BUT IT TAKETH THEM AWAY OR MAKETH THEM IN THE MOST SEXIST WAY I CANNOT STAND IT

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

ok last post before i clock out but genuinely. GOD. when i tell you these two moments keep me up at night. the shift in blame. and especially bc the butcher is echoing a version of that earlier phrasing back at him: "without reason or motive. you took it." vs "whose life did you take without provocation, without threat?"

like, is arthur maybe just naming parker bc nobody knows abt john's existence, much less involvement, and he's still wanted for that murder? maybe. but the butcher does warn him earlier, Don't lie. I'll know. and it's just, it makes me wonder. bc in that first exchange, arthur's using that murder, kind of dishonestly, to guilt john into helping him hunt the larsons. so like, genuinely, when he's not doing that, how much does he consider parker's death his fault, over john's?

john was just acting on instinct, after all. arthur's the one who chose to open the book.

[femme-foucault]

One of the most retroactively funny things about season 1 of Yellowjackets now that it could not be more obvious that the writers have no idea where the story is going -- they said originally they had all 5 seasons planned out, but while that might be true for the teen/90s plotline they are clearly just winging the adult one -- is that the adult survivors acting like Misty is THE WORST when season 3 confirms Shauna is more unhinged than everyone else put together except maybe unmedicated Lottie.....which makes everyone acting like Misty is the pariah kinda hilarious. Adult Nat's first words to Misty in Season 1 are "Hi, Misty, you crazy bitch." Nat ilu but at this point with Shauna it's not even trauma bonding....she's causing your trauma lol. She made you cut up and decapitate your coach, probably the only healthy male mentor figure you ever had, and put his head on a stick so they could have a little Bacchalian dance around thingy. Even if the other YJs ever DID find out about Misty and the black box, as far as actions that could sabotage potential rescue vs ACTUAL rescue, I think it goes without saying what Shauna and (again, unmedicated) Lottie did was way, way, waaaaaaay worse.

[silverraes]

❌ "does your family maybe have a lot of money?"

✔️ "are you sure you're not secretly a mob boss?"