#command economy definition

[joonipertree]

Michael

Tags: Fluff, crack, absolutely stupid. Enjoy.

"michael"

a blank stare.

"michael manjiro." you said and promptly burst out laughing, leaning against your boyfriend who simply turned back to Draken and continued talking, face on his palm and body not budging at your weight.

toman chose not to mention your maniacal snorts and the uncharacteristic way their leader didn't pay attention to his partner.  The one person he looked at every time he talked to them, the person he would give his food to, the person that he has any inclination in taking care of. 

If there was a fight going on, they weren't getting involved. If a breakup was to happen, they would need a way to steer a sunken ship that would have their captain dangling from the side. Mikey and you fought but it was never public, nor did it last more than it takes you time to bat your eyes and cling to him. 

"Can I please for the love of god ask what's so funny? Mikey looks two seconds away from murdering kenny." Emma was the only one who had the guts to ask.

You got off mikey's back and stared at his side profile that was indeed glaring daggers at the vice captain. ooooh, you didn't realise there was trouble in paradise.

"Oh my god, Kenchin did something? In this economy? To you? How exciting."

"I didn't do anything, he's not mad….he's just taking his frustrations out on me because he's fucking soft for you.”

“You sound whipped, bro.” You said with a snort. “Couldn’t be me.”

A hand comes to squish your cheeks together. Your boyfriend finally looks you dead in the eyes, expression blank but edges soft. Your pout was even more puckered up and you made kissy sounds to ask for love.

The boy didn't budge.

How fucking dare he.

"What's my name?" Mikey was not going to let this go.

“Michael."

"It is not."

"That's what Mikey is short for." 

"what the fuck is this conversation?" emma murmured.

“I’ll give you a kiss if you call me anything but that white boy trash name." 

Your lips quirked up, "Michael Manjiro." and you were back to giggling uncontrollably.

Toman had never seen Mikey give you a stare that unamused, you were his baby so of course he could never feel anything but complete and utter adoration for you.

 He was still adoring, considering his rough calloused hands cradled your face but the vein popping out did not hide his irritation. 

“No.”

“I said your birth name, I have done nothing wrong.”

“You barely call me Manjiro, it’s always when you’re serious. You are most definitely not serious right now.”

“Michael Manjiro is a meticulously crafted name that was forged from what’s yours to sound like the name of the dude from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. How is that not serious?”

“It has been three days, please for the love of god, call me anything else.” The gang never thought they’d hear their leader sound that desperate.

 They’ve seen him cling to you and literally stop a fight just so he could go and hang out with you. They have seen many sides of Michael since you two started dating. But they have never heard their commander beg. They didn’t even realise he was capable of that and that you held all the power in Tokyo simply for being you. 

The fear they had for you had grown, wondering if this was a torture device that  could be used against them when an enemy attacks. Were you the enemy? Were you the devil toying with a poor man’s heart? Should they be worshiping you now??

“Mmmm, okay bro.”

And with that, they saw the fall of the most feared gang leader in Tokyo. The Invincible Mikey had been left for dead. 

You squish his face.

"my lil baby, why you so angy huh? is it cuz I called you a thing that lives in the sewers?" 

mikey felt his body melt at the pet name, leaning against your palms and deciding to ignore the second statement.

something caught his eye though.

both his hands cupped your face and you shut your eyes to enjoy how big and warm they were. he was always engulfing in his love, never scared to radiate his feelings onto you. 

mikey told you once that he had a chance to live a new life and he wanted to feel unapologetically. you loved that his feelings for you were felt with no hesitation. 

"is this some weird mating ritual?" hanma asked with his usual disgusted tone.

your hands squished your boyfriend's cheek harder in defiance. 

mikey swiped his thumb under your eyes, the pressure soothing your tight skin and making your cheeks relax completely.

"when was the last time you slept, love?" 

oh fuck.

"last night." You said in a meek voice.

mikey hummed and his thumb caressed the apple of your cheeks gently and you hoped if you stayed still long enough that he'd forget about you.

"how long?"

ofc he'd never forget u. fuck him and his undying love for you.

"the appropriate amount of time." 

he said your full name with a warning tone and your bottom lip wobbled because my god, mikey using anyone's proper name? unheard of.

"there you are, I was looking for you." a voice chimed in just as you were praying to the eldritch gods. chifuyu had earned himself the title of best friend right then and there. a blessing from the universe, your saviour. 

"what volume are you on now? are you done with the manga?

you hoped michael killed him.

your boyfriend stared at you, daring you to answer the question. you could just lie but in any case, you had been found out. mikey knew how you functioned. if a manga was good enough, you would sacrifice sleep and all worldly possessions to finish it.

"I did finish it." you mumbled, begging fuyu to read the room.

"in three days? god, it took me a week. so tell me---" 

mikey threw a shoe at chifuyu, it landed square in the face. 

[liesmyth]

Do you think the Nine Houses follow a Marxist, Keynsian, or Austrians economic model

this ask made me SO happy you have no idea! some vague thoughts

The Houses obviously have to do careful resource allocation. I doubt they have a free market economy, at least not on a system-wide scale. I could see some of the Houses — like the Third or Fifth Houses, which are by all accounts wealthy and with a very large population — develop some kind of internal capitalist economy within the House itself. Namely, private actors who control and own properties, wealth accumulation, competitive markets etc. But ultimately I think even those are subject to strong (local) governmental oversight because, again, they live on space installations in a situation of constant resource constraint. I bet there are quotas for everything.

However! No way ALL the Houses have a market economy. I'm thinking especially those Houses that are very small and/or have a "mission" which means that societal development is carefully planned, and probably the economy is also centrally planned. (Ninth, Eight, Sixth, maybe Second and/or Fourth).

On an overreaching scale (within the Home System) I don't think "the Empire" (as in, John) is overly concerned with the yearly economic development of the Houses, partly because he's been historically absent for decades or even centuries at a time. Verging sharply into headcanon territory, I think the closest thing the Houses have to a real centralised government is military leadership (High Command or the Fleet Admiral, who's the head of the Second House) and when it comes to issues that concern multiple Houses but are more "civilian" in nature, is kind of a free-for-all. I'm thinking about how Harrow thought that writing to ask for help would result in the Fifth or maybe the Third cannibalising the Ninth House — it looks like there's an informal council of House leaders, but no properly organised central government.

Trade: travel and commerce between the Houses is regulated. You can't just take a spaceship and move from the Eight to the Second, for example — movement of people as well as goods depends on a ship schedule that runs on "routes" and I'd bet there's an immigration/emigration quota that's maybe decided between specific House leaders, or maybe a third party. My best bet is that one of the Houses (possibly the Third or Fifth) OR an ad-hoc organisation (which includes multiple higher-ups from said well-off Houses) are the ones who regulate shipping and travel, and either have an ownership stake in the shipping system or administrate it in the name of the Emperor.

The shepherded planets: putting the "imperialism" in "Empire". The Houses definitely exploit their colony planet for resources, as per AYU (talking about the "contracts" that the Empire signs with the occupied planets). However, it's also worth noting that 1) for at least 5000 years, the House system was self-sustaining and hadn't made contact with any other population; and 2) stele travel is kind of a hassle, and only seems to be limited to Cohort ships that we know of.

What I'm getting at is that I think the economy of the Houses is not dependent on their war of conquest — imo it's more of a mission of conquest for conquest's sake, see Corona thinking that the economy of the Houses doesn't quite add up, and Augustine talking like the ongoing expansion of the Houses is a whim of John's and little else. Basically, it seems to be a way to oppress the occupied planet for occupation's sake, and I wouldn't be surprised if the resources the Houses extract from the conquered planets go straight into financing yet more war and occupation and very little (if any) of any wealth they may accumulate makes it back to the Houses.

It COULD be that there's a necromantic equivalent of the East India Company, and my bet would be on the Second administrating it — Harrow doesn't seem to rate them at all, which tracks because Harrow's primary concern is Houses that could be a threat to the Ninth, and the Second being focused on exploitation that's external to the Home System could be an explanation for that. I've also seen speculation that making money from colonialism is the Fifth House's purview (*) but EYE think it makes more sense if the House that are more strongly associated with running the war effort are also the ones making money from it. Or it could be a joint operation.

(*) never forget the iconic tag #we regret to inform you that spreadsheets dad is maybe running the necromantic East India Company @katakaluptastrophy here)

Anyway. Sorry I haven't answered your actual question! GUN TO MY HEAD, if I had to pick ONE economic model to map the Houses onto, I wanna say soviet type economy (think: centralised planning, no inflation, little to no unemployment, tendency towards black market, little to no innovation). I have thoughts about what the consumer needs market looks like in the Houses but nobody needs to hear that. Also, it's def very limited

If anyone has thoughts PLEASE feel free to jump in, I'm always thinking about the logistical side of space imperialism in the necro empire!

[imviotrash]

🗡️Edward Midford and Autism coding 🗡️

During my Hiatus from the Kuroshitsuji fandom, I got diagnosed with autism. It took me some time to come to terms with that and to figure myself out.

I returned to the Kuro fandom last summer, due to (what I now come to recognize as) my longtime special Interest finally getting an anime adaptation and upon rereading some of my favourite arcs, I came to the realisation that I see a lot of my (and my peers) autistic traits in Edward. What's interesting about this character is that he has a lot of autistic traits, that are not really touched upon in media. So lets get into it!

The gentleman extreme (and how everything is taken a bit too literal/seriously):

In his introduction in chapter 52 he is shown to uphold the same beliefs as his mother, scolding his sister for behaving in an unbecoming manner. He's shown to be very close to his family and strictly upholds their values of protection. At first one may assume he is just like his mother, but it is quickly revealed that he is far more ridiculous. His upholding of his gentleman status is often paired with anger, such as in chapter 58, where he scolds other men for not letting women and children go on the lifeboats first (king behaviour) and also being the one to later recommend to look for more survivors. He has a strong code of ethics and upholds it, even if it is seen as ridiculous or even dangerous.

When it comes to clothing, he also upholds strict values and instantly gets flustered and afraid when that standard is not upheld, to the point where he needs physical distance and shields his eyes.

From these tidbits already we can observe that he is ridiculously formal, upholding the social decorum to the very extreme. While autistic individuals are known for their non-conformity, they are also known to accidentally not conform by confirming too much and following instructions to every detail. I fall into both extremes, but I definitely stick to the latter when it comes to social interactions.

I think Edward definitely falls into that category, because he represents how ridiculous the Victorian code of ethics and etiquette can be if upheld at all times. I may dabble into headcannon territory again, but I strongly believe that knighthood and the chivalry connected to it is something like a special interest for him, which contributes to the way he acts.

Aggression and volume:

In his introduction he yells at his future brother in law. A complete overreaction and incredibly ironic considering his previous scolding regarding etiquette. This happens multiple times, especially when confronted with Ciel his gentlemanly behaviour suddenly turns into childish banter. He is usually soft spoken but can be louder if he is simply commanded to do so.

Volume control is something a lot of autistic people struggle with. For me it's especially when talking about special interests or talking to a person who interrupts me A LOT. I am quiet and do not speak often, so when I do I must make the most of it.

Based on cannon evidence, I believe that Edward may struggle with this too. He's loud to get his point across, because he believes that loudness will make others listen to him.

Spiky hair, in this economy?

So we all know Frances and her strict rules regarding men's hair, right? Everything has to be slicked back and she thinks Sebastians hair is atrocious (so do I). So why is it that her son is the only one allowed to run around with this type of hairstyle? Alexis has very nicely brushed back hair, Elizabeths is also nicely done. Isn't it strange that she makes an exception for ONE family member?

So here is where I dabble into headcannons, because I think the exception was made because he has sensory issues regarding his hair. He doesn't like it slicked back in any way and feels uncomfortable with any product in his hair.

Once again, heavily falling into headcannons, so take this one with a grain of salt.

Elizabeth and her influence:

Edward is incredibly attached to her sister. Mainly being protective of her and not trusting other men (especially his brother in law) to treat her with the respect she deserves. He knows and appreciates her skill and knows she's incredibly capable. So...why is he so attached?

Elizabeth is an important catalyst for his behaviour, because it shows the extremes of his gentleman code. His good manners instantly turn into ridiculous aggression as soon as he sees something that he views as a threat to her. Despite his behaviour towards Ciel, he does care about him, because he realises how important he is to his sister. Elizabeth is a person of comfort for Edward. He admires her talent and sees her as a valuable family member who has been through a lot of hurt.

Autistic individuals often have trouble with boundaries and attach themselves onto others quickly, which leads to them unintentionally treating them incorrectly. This is definitely the case here, since he gives little (social) agency to Elizabeth for the sake of her protection. He genuinely cares about her but is unable to set healthy boundaries, because his way of emphaphy differs from the social norm.

Masking and copying behaviour:

What is interesting about Edward is how he copies the behaviour of others. He has a role model and copies their behaviour because he desires to master it. So why does he do that?

My answer is masking. Edward genuinely admires these people, but is unsure of how to adapt their skills in his own way, so he copies them. This is something we can often see in masking. Behaviour that is seen as acceptable by society is often copied by autistic individuals to blend into society. I think for Edward it's a combination of masking and admiration. His strong upholding of the Gentleman code also fits well into this category.

Beyond that, the Blue cult arc also proves that he able to severely alter the way he behaves, if needed. Does he feel comfortable with that? Absolutely not. But he does have the great ability to do so if instructed, which proves to yet be another factor for him masking his behaviour.

Mediocrity in a Neurotypical society:

So Edward had this nice monologue about him being mediocre compared to his prodigy sister and I think it is exactly this scene, which makes me headcannon him as autistic. Because this is the exact trait I do not see often.

In media, many autistic individuals are represented as prodigies and amazingly intelligent and I can't help but hate that stereotype, because it puts unrealistic expectations on disabled individuals. I have prodigy friends who are autistic and I truly admire them, but I need people to understand that autism is a disability and not just "socially incompetent person who is going to revolutionise the world". As soon as one's interest is not deemed useful by society (which mainly includes "feminine" interests), they are not validated. Autism is only accepted by society if it proves to be impressive or useful. It is not seen as a disability, but as something to exploit.

I like Edwards monologue, because I relate and it rounds out his character really well. He accepts that he is not a prodigy, that he sucks in many regards, but that he still looks up to those who fit into the standard. His monologue is something that I've truly taken into heart, because you do not need to be a prodigy to be valid, you should not need to be extraordinary to be accepted as you are. You are allowed to be mediocre. You are allowed to treat your disability as a disability, because that's what it is.

Lastly:

Please remember that most of this is based on my personal expenses with autism. It is an incredibly diverse neuro divergency and manifests itself differently in all sorts of ways. Many of these traits may not apply to you or to anyone you know. This is just a personal observation based on my own and my companions experiences.

[homestuckreplay]

Homestuck Is A Game, Who Is The Player?

Week 3 Retrospective

'Video games have long been associated with spectatorship as well as play, from their origins in quarter-fueled arcades, where high score displays implied the presence of admiring or competitive spectators, to their migration to home screens and consoles. Live streaming chat emulates these older models, but its interaction with economies of scale on streaming platforms brings a different kind of intimacy and intensity to the experience. Chat lets spectators feel like they are there with the streamer as well as a part of a crowd, even if they are alone in their room.' [Jeremy Antley - emphasis mine]

From Homestuck’s very first page, the comic has made something clear. We are not allowed to immerse ourselves in John Egbert’s world. There is a layer of separation between us, an interface mediating our access to his life and story, a voiceover narration from the person who’s really in control. Who is this person, and what form does their control over John take?

Homestuck is presented like a video game, yet unlike a video game, we don’t control the character’s movements with arrow keys or have the chance to type our own commands directly into the text box. Instead of being able to explore the game on our own terms, we are confined to a specific and predetermined route, even though others seem theoretically possible. Simply put, we are not the ones playing the game.

Essay continued under the cut - about 2.6k words

I think there are two really important questions to consider when analyzing the meta elements of Homestuck and treating it as a game. The first - what kind of game is it? The second - where exactly do we stand in relation to the player(s)?

The most obvious answer to question one is ‘Homestuck is a text based adventure game.’ This guide to text based adventures is a great overview, and we can map the example commands here onto commands we’ve seen in Homestuck. ‘Examine room’ (p.4) is a one-word action, ‘Captchalogue smoke pellets’ (p.9) is an action and direct object, and ‘Nail poster to wall’ (p.19) includes the indirect object. John hasn’t given any orders yet - he’s too nice a guy for that - but ‘Report progress to TG’ (p.39) is definitely communicating with another character. All of these, and most other command lines, feel like reasonable instructions that could be recognized by a game.

However, commands like ‘Fondly regard cremation’ (p.52) and ‘Play haunting piano refrain’ (p.77) honestly feel too characterful to be fully interpreted by a computer, and ‘Squawk like an imbecile and shit on your desk’ (p.16) is… well, I tried typing this into the command prompt for the classic text adventure Zork, and got the following response.

A text adventure is just not set up to interpret wacky, left field ideas, much less respond to them in an entertaining way. And we know there is a real person behind Homestuck doing exactly that.

If my party enters the wizard’s study in Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, and I tell the Dungeon Master that I squawk like an imbecile and sit on the wizard’s desk, that statement will be understood. Sure, the DM will probably call me an idiot and put a nasty spike trap on the desk, but what I said will become part of the story in the way that a nonsense command in a text based video game never can. It’s interesting to think of Homestuck as a tabletop roleplaying game, where the narrator is the Game Master, the command prompt is a player, and John is a player character (presumably TT, TG and GG are the rest of his party and they’re just really late to the session).

Homestuck isn’t just text based, though - it has a strong visual element, including interfaces and overlays where the player can click and drag items between John’s inventory and his environment, or around his space. This suggests it could also be a point and click adventure game, a genre that grew out of text based games as graphics improved, and is defined by a strong inventory management component (check), puzzle solving quests (check - we’ve recently solved our first quest of acquiring the Sburb Beta) and dialog trees (????). The sprite based, isometric art style is really good for getting an overview of the space and seeing possible interactable objects, and Homestuck does feature extended dialog sequences - we don’t know if there are other possible inputs from John, but it's interesting to think that there might be.

These three genres - text based adventures, point and click adventures, and tabletop roleplaying games - all developed throughout the 1970s and 80s. It’s reasonable that Andrew Hussie (born 1979) could have grown up with some of these games. But to answer the second question, ‘where do we stand in relation to the player’, we might need to look at media forms still in their infancy - let’s plays, livestreams, and actual play.

[Michael Sawyer, 2004]

In the past few years, ‘Let’s Play [Game]’ has become a relatively popular thread format on the Something Awful forums, as well as personal websites. This began with posters taking screenshots of their playthroughs of a game and adding commentary in the text. The medium has now advanced to video and is typically hosted on YouTube, with commentary overlaid. Either format gives a creator the space to play through as much of the game as they choose, and then edit exactly what content they want to show to the audience, providing commentary after the fact. 

Homestuck, with its per-page illustrations, could be seen as a long thread of forum posts by the player, each including screenshots as they move through the game. The inclusion of short Flash animations shows the edge into video, and makes me wonder if we’ll see longer or more complex videos, perhaps with voiceover narration, as Homestuck expands its focus. The self-referential and aggressive yet helpful commentary in Homestuck is similar in tone to Sawyer's playthrough above, and could easily be the work of a player who knows where the story will go, at least in the short term, and is dropping hints to the audience while purposefully concealing some things.

Livestreaming video games is a similar concept to Let's Plays, but performed in real time. Often hosted on Justin.tv, an open video broadcast website that’s been gaining prominence in the past couple of years, a livestream is an improvised and unedited way to watch someone game. Any commentary from the creator happens without knowledge of how the playthrough will turn out. Homestuck, by Hussie’s own admission, is being written similarly in real life - they don’t know more than the broad strokes of how the story will go, and it’s possible that neither the author nor the narrator knows the long term implications of an action such as John stealing his dad’s PDA. 

Livestreams open the possibility for viewers to influence game events, if the streamer listens to their audience. We know this is true in Homestuck - readers are able to submit commands, and some are chosen for the story. The real time nature of Homestuck, waiting each day for the new update, is equivalent to waiting for a streamer to come online and start playing again so we can find out where their game goes next. This is compounded by us having no access to Homestuck outside of the streamer - we cannot buy and play this game for ourselves, it’s still in some kind of early or limited access, and the streamer controls all our knowledge. 

The livestream is definitely most similar to how Homestuck is made by its author, but it's hard to say whether its narrator is commentating in real time, or after the fact. I can't find any definite clues in our pages so far - I think the narrator wants to seem smart and superior, but I can't say whether they have the knowledge to back it up.

[img source]

Our final media format is known as Actual Play. Almost a year ago, the creators of Penny Arcade (along with Dungeons & Dragons game designer Chris Perkins) began releasing Acquisitions Incorporated, a short-run, officially licensed podcast where the group plays through a D&D adventure to demonstrate gameplay interspersed with jokes. This isn’t the first time a TTRPG publisher has recorded sessions to help people learn the game, but this idea seems to be crossing over into the entertainment genre - and webcomics are part of that movement.

In the first episode, the group have a brief aside. The DM says that ‘some players prefer to refer to their characters in the third person… others prefer to get into the first,’ and one player says they’ve observed the same thing in World of Warcraft. What’s not explicitly said is that the Game Master typically refers to the player characters in second person, describing what happens to ‘you’ and what ‘you’ see - much like streamers talking to their chat. The blocks of narrative text below pictures in Homestuck could easily be a Game Master balancing giving information to an unruly player, and providing entertainment for the audience. John’s lucky or unlucky moments with his sylladex could be the result of particularly good or bad dice rolls from his unseen player.

Actual play is a really great format for deep diving into a small cast of characters, and exploring their emotional state in ways that aren't intrinsic to a lot of video games. As we're already seeing the beginnings of John's emotional arc, we know this will be a focus, but we need two to four more characters with equally large roles in the story to really form a TTRPG party. Actual play also tends to include a lot of combat and its mechanics. We know Homestuck can handle crunchy mechanics due to the sylladex, but I'd expect to see the Strife concept become just as in depth and central to the story if Homestuck ends up fitting into this mold.

All three of these formats can have a mass audience, just like Homestuck does in reality - but Homestuck also feels like a very personal experience. Two people playing the same video game, even a highly linear game such as Portal or one that doesn’t involve much active interaction such as a visual novel, have slightly different gameplay based on the speed they move through the story and their missteps on the way to finding the solution to a puzzle. 

Similarly, my experience of Homestuck is different from yours. I read the new update every day, while I know some people wait for a few days of updates to build up and then read a larger chunk. Maybe I clicked ‘Aggrieve’ and ‘Abjure’ three times each on p.90, alternating the options, while you clicked ‘Aggrieve’ five times in sequence and then ‘Abjure’ only twice. Maybe I didn’t realize p.110 had an interactive element at first, and skipped over it until somebody pointed it out to me (really telling on myself here). These elements of Homestuck that we have direct control over are currently only a small part of the story, but they do exist.

In this way, Homestuck feels a little bit like sitting in the living room as a kid watching your older brother play a game, begging him to let you take over for a minute, occasionally doing so until he gets frustrated with your inability to Strife and takes the controller back. The nostalgia of the simplistic graphics and the 70s and 80s games that are being evoked only adds to this cozy feeling. If Homestuck starts to add more interactive elements, such as branching paths, opportunities for us to take over the cursor, or a chance for us to use John’s sylladex ourselves and choose what he picks up, it might be worth thinking of Homestuck as different iterations of the same game, each of us watching our own, slightly different player, and even co-playing with them.

So, who IS this narrator? In my mind, I’m trying to draw a clear distinction between the author and the narrator. Hussie is the author in the real world, and the narrator, or player, or GM, exists within the work. Their role is best described on page 82:

‘The game presently eluding you is only the latest sleight of hand in the repertoire of an unseen riddler, one to engender a sense not of mirth, but of lack. His coarse schemes are those less of a prankster than a common pickpocket. His riddle is Absence itself.’

The narrator is this unseen riddler (or perhaps unseenRiddler?), providing a secondary layer of control over what happens and what we are able to see. They’re the person clicking and dragging objects around John’s room, and choosing what actions to take next. The narration is their perspective on the game - whether we see this as a GM describing a scene to their players, or a streamer reading aloud information that the game has given them and providing their own commentary. 

So, we're watching the narrator play Homestuck, in whatever form it takes - but there's another layer to this. On page 22, an equivalence is made between the Sburb Beta, which John was supposed to receive on April 10 (and finally acquired on April 13 in-story, p.100), and the Homestuck Beta, which launched to us on April 10, but was quickly canceled and replaced with Homestuck proper on April 13. The Homestuck beta is linked within the comic, and might be canon within it - the narrator making an initial run at the game before restarting their save (perhaps on a different computer or console?) and trying again. Homestuck the game is currently about a kid who lives in the suburbs - and if the name and logo are anything to go by, Sburb could also be a suburbs-themed game. While we watch the riddler play Homestuck, the riddler will be watching John play the game Sburb. How deep does this go? Are there more layers inwards or outwards?

I’ve been puzzling this over for days, and I’m definitely left with more questions than I can answer. Here are the ones I'm focused on:

Is the unseen riddler playing the game as intended? Now that they’ve passed the tutorial, are they keeping the game on the rails and trying their best to follow a linear story, or are they pushing the boundaries, going for some kind of pacifist or resource-stripped run, trying to interfere with John’s intended story? Have they played the game before, and if so, how does this affect their gameplay?

If the unseen riddler is a character within the story, distinct from the external author, are we the true audience? Will there be an audience within the story, or perhaps other players? If so, how big will it be? What kind of reach does Homestuck the game have, and how many people are playing it or tuning in to watch?

How permeable are the boundaries? Is John simply pixels on a screen for the unseen riddler to play with, with no agency of his own outside of the riddler’s interpretation, like if we were playing The Sims? Or is it possible for the riddler to enter the game, or for John to leave it, and the two of them to communicate directly? Or a middle ground - something like ‘character bleed’ in TTRPGs, where a player embodies a character for so long that despite their not being real, they come to influence each other even outside of gameplay?

What the hell is the Midnight Crew? Is this a different game that exists separately to Homestuck? Will our riddler, or a different one, eventually play it? If we have three games - Homestuck, Midnight Crew, and Sburb - what exactly is the relationship between them, and how interrelated are they?

This is a lot of thoughts for what is, at time of writing, is 125 pages of comedy webcomic. But the story is just beginning, and we’ve been told it’s going to be a long day. Anything could be important, and with the frequent in-text nods to the meta elements - ‘examine third and fourth walls of room’ (p.61), ‘you decide it’s time for less meta, and more beta’ (p.113), the title appearing in the clouds on p.82 that John may or may not be able to see, the integration of the physical captchalogue card into the sylladex interface on p.98 - I don’t want to draw any firm boundaries, or make any assumptions about what is and what isn’t part of the story. Instead, I’ve cataloged the meta elements of Homestuck that might be worth paying attention to as we move through the comic, to develop a more concrete theory in time.

[0lshadyl0]

Hey!

Could we get more about the yandere whitebeard crew?. I could imagine that if the whitebeard crew had any female members that they would be more protected of them. They just look like a crew that if a marine attacks one of they female members then they would get double attacked. Whitebeard goes into protect girl dad mode if they get attacked

I also feel like if they do have female members then there is probably one that is like a big sister to the rest of the girls. We're all the other girls can talk to her.

Btw sorry for my bad English.^^

First of all mi vida, I think your English is very good, I'm not an expert in the English language either, after all my native language is Spanish (which will come in handy when I finish my drafts for Miguel O'hara fics since I will enter to the Spiderman across the spider verse fandom, I already have about 3 ocs already created for that, sorry for the spam XD I am just so excited to see that spanish is becoming more popular here), so, as for how you write, in my opinion you do it very well, goob job darling~

Second, canonically speaking, the whitebeard pirates have female members in the gang, which are the nurses, as you can see in this image.

And what you say is true, Whitebeard's enemies would definitely try to attack the female members, but not just for the fact that they are women, and of course, Whitebeard, as a man of older generation, would feel the need to care of his daughters; but the truth would be more due to the fact that it is them, the nurses and the medical team, ruling out Marco, my headcanon is that the rest of the doctors and assistants are exclusively women, why? Because he believes that women are the ones who take better care of others, for the simple fact that they are women and the care and upbringing of others is within the feminine nature

I also have the headcanon, which is very possible a canon fact, that this specific pirate group rescues or finds children, takes them into their crew, and they are raised as the future members of the Whitebeard pirates, so it's very likely that , as you say, have female members in the group who have certain roles, such as the teacher, the older sister, the younger sister, the voice of reason, the woman who is in charge of the group's economy ( just as women are the ones who should be in charge of the household economy) the mother of the group etc…

and here between you and me:

Marco had a very hard training to be a doctor in Whitebeard's pirates due to the fact that he was a man, and surely many of the nurses and doctors (at that time all felame) had to beg for him so that the captain would give him a chance.

Women are definitely more favored in the pirate crew, maybe not in positions of combat power like being a commander, because that would be too dangerous and Whitebeard has generally only let women in for medical or caregiving positions or they're still children, so usually no woman has the combat skills required to be a commander, but it is the women who have more decision-making power in all other aspects, economy, travel, children, etc…

Every time there is a fight or armed conflict, either with the marines or another pirate group, there is a group with a secret commander who is in charge of transporting the women and children away from danger and bringing them back to their nakamas when it's safe

[miracles-and-butterflies]

What are the jobs/occupations in your mafia au?

Are the teens in training or are strictly not allowed to touch any weapons until their eighteen?

How protective are the adults over their children? Are they like regular parents/abuela/Tio or are they like "You bully my child? Do you want you AND your parents six feet deep? I/we can make it happen and no one would even look for you"

Are they rich per say? Do they have gifts?

How did the mafia start? Was Alma or Pedro already born in one or did it develop after Pedro's death?

How protective are the grandkids over each other? I honestly feel like everybody would be mad protective of Antonio since he's the youngest, and he's the most spoiled out of all of them. (But are the grandkids on some level spoiled as well?)

Do Mirabel and Camilo have some sort of a good relationship in this au?

How does everyone feel about blood shed? Do they feel queasy or will they not even bat an eye at it?

Sorry for all the questions, I just love Mafia au's.

Don’t apologise! I love getting questions for any of my AUs!

This will be a long one, so apologies if this isn’t out quickly.

Not too sure what you mean by jobs/occupations. Looking at other AUs there is no specific things and the only thing I could find on the internet was the hierarchy or roles in the party game. If you have anything to help with this, I’d greatly appreciate it!

As soon a Madrigal reached thirteen, they were allowed to begin training. Nobody is actually allowed to do anything in reality until they are eighteen though.

Depends on which of the adults you speak to. Alma was very protective when the triplets were little, once they were old enough to handle themselves, she stepped back a bit. That doesn’t mean she won’t defend them though. Pepa is definitely the most likely to bite your head off (metaphorically) if you even so much as look at her kids the wrong way. Julieta, Félix and Agustín are a lot more normal.

They weren’t rich initially. When Pedro died, Alma gained all of his family’s (who are also dead) inheritance and then became wealthy. She managed to keep a steady inflow of money, so they have remained quite comfortable over the years. Though they aren’t as rich as before, naturally having such a large family has its expenses and the economy is shit.

They do not have gifts. I felt it would make them too-overpowered; it would be too similar to every other Madrigal mafia AU; and I just made an AU where the gifted Madrigals become a crime family, I’m not repeating the same idea.

Pedro and Alma were both from crime families - granted, Alma’s was much more minor and they had practically stopped crime by the time she was an adult. However, growing up in that environment still influenced her and allowed her to meet Pedro. She brought a lot of influence and new ideals to Pedro, making her quite high-ranking in the order of command. Which is why, at his death, all his wealth and power fell to her over anyone else.

Influenced by their mother, Dolores and Camilo (especially Camilo) are very protective over Antonio. Luisa, as usual, is overprotective of Mirabel. The others are more normal.

Yes, Antonio is very spoiled as the youngest and one of two boys. Isabela, Dolores and Camilo were also very spoiled - though are a bit ignorant to the fact. Luisa and Mirabel, neither the eldest or male/only female in their side of the family, definitely fell under the radar a bit more in childhood; neither of them were spoiled.

Camilo and Mirabel have their usual rivalry. (It’s in their characters, I’m not changing it). They spend more time together here, if that’s what you’re asking.

Mirabel and Pepa are both squeamish. Pepa, who has adapted a little, usually carries a paper bag with her now. Mirabel, hasn’t really seen anything yet, but faints over a pinprick or paper cut. Needless to say, the family have doubts about how well she’s going to do in the future. The rest either don’t care about bloodshed or actually enjoy it.

If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to ask!

[centrally-unplanned]

I think George Washington is a good ask here because there's a variety of different perspectives to evaluate him from, as well as insights into how each is considered to matter. Like, did he make the British colonies in North America more or less likely to become independent? Did he make the new state more or less secure? Was it a good or bad thing that the 13 colonies became independent? How good of a job do you think he did at whatever goals he personally had in mind? What did he have in mind, anyway - just rent-seeking for Virginian aristocrats or some more idealistic definition of "good" that bears resemblance to something we'd appreciate?

George Washington is a very interesting figure, because he is a classic "consensus leader" in some ways, but in an era where "consensus" is in fact very hard to come across and takes unique talent to be forged. I think we can bucket him: As a military leader he is only "fine": not bad, don't get me wrong, but he has no core tactical innovations or operational finesse on display. He certainly does deserve credit for his "wait them out" approach, and its true that he received political pressure from groups like the Continental Congress that he resisted. But this is a classic VOR moment: of course the distant, political actors demanded infeasible military action that the on-the-ground, faced-with-the-consequences-of-defeat guy would resist. That is a classic dynamic. Other generals in the war faced similar demands and similarly resisted. Again, he was an able commander, just nothing amazing.

I don't view him as being overly crucial in the core "state making" moments for the US in forming the constitution and all that- essentially the dynamics of the war of independence, the strength of their state rivals, and how the colonial economy functioned made a unified state the natural course. So here its not controversial to claim his VOR is pretty low.

However, I give him very high VOR for his presidency in the core process of interpreting that constitutional foundation through the lends of a strong federalized government with legalist, cohesive norms. He is not an innovator (people like Hamilton are doing that work) but he really was the One Guy In The Room who could bring the crazy factions together and stake his prestige on necessary tax reforms, financial reform, and crushing rebellion. VOR here matters - someone would have done something in the face of these, but the alt timeline is that states gain more and more autonomy. I think few people but Washington could have set the the federal government up as well as he.

So overall I would give him... lets go with A-, he plays a similar role as Lee Kuan Yew, if via very different tactics.

Demerits though for his lack of future planning on things like political parties & strong electoral politics. In that category he is pretty much VOR-less, he did what the default man would do and failed to exert any agency over it.

As for his own goals, he is very idealistic, and was actually, truly concerned with the idea of a strong, independent republic - he was born rich, he could afford to do that of course. And vis a vis slavery the strength of the union and the federal government was the only way it would be ended in the south on the timeline it was. The process of abolition in the south was very much a product of northern abolitionists forcing change onto resisting foreign polities. Colonizing them, if you will, with their own culture & systems. So he was a net good for this cause, even if it was not at all his own personal agenda.

[uglypastels]

Right

I thought this was over but then i saw it pop up in my notifications again and truly had a face crack moment

Because that's all you give by leaving these kinds of comments. A very sad and empty feeling in my chest that makes me want to scream. Of course, it doesn't help that the comment was left on a fic where these were literally all the comments before it

(The last one i cut off because it just was a suggestion of where the story should go)

Now, i removed the urls bc i do not have anything against these people. It's not about them. This type of stuff shows up in almost every fic of mine.

And yes, obviously I appreciate the thought behind the fact someone wants to read more of my writing but I also cannot stop the feeling of how little the work i actually have put out is valued.

Maybe it is a short fic of not even a thousand words (although I have also gotten these demands on fics reaching 15k in word count) but it still takes time and effort and energy. Especially with requests, its difficult to write something you know another person has thought of, has expectations for... There is always doubt in my mind when I post a request that I failed the person who wanted the story because it's not what they expected. It's nervewrecking. So yeah, seeing people enjoy the story and wanting more definitely dissipates that constant worry But (there's always a but y'all)

A writer has their own ideas of how a story should go. Even if its a request, you get to interpret that in your own way (previously mentioned anxieties follow up later) and hopefully those interpretations will be appreciated. That includes the plot. And the plot includes, you guessed it, a beginning and an ending.

As the writer, I decide when and how the story ends.

By getting comments such as the ones I put above, I just get constant reminders shot in my face that no one really cares. Not just about me- hell, i dont care about myself- but about writers in general. No one cares about the actual creativity of the writing or the processes. Yall just want your free content, which is understandable in this economy, and then move on.

I could blame this on the Story Time/Like for Part Two internet culture and maybe I am. Hopefully you can see the comparison, especially with how on Tiktok all content constantly seems to be accumulating into series and parts and just never ending. All a person has to do is comment "pt 2 pls" and like it and done.

Just consider that, you get to enjoy something that is given to you completely for free, no questions asked. So why dont you actually enjoy it? Why does there have to always be more? (And if so, why cant the "more" be the already existing catalogues of the writers on here? Or did you skim through all that already -sorry im getting pissed off now, sleep deprivation)

Anyway, i'm tired and dont make any sense. Besides, i cant and wont police people around on here. read the stuff you want, comment all you want, but dont forget that the people writing the stories you like are also human with their own ideas and emotions. Not machines who can print out words at any given command.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Sceptics often wonder whether there will be enough income for everyone in a degrowth scenario. The answer is yes, by definition. Income is an abstraction that represents command over goods. It is simply the obverse of the total prices of all commodities produced and consumed in the economy. There is always exactly enough income to buy everything that the economy produces. So even in a degrowth scenario, where we are scaling down less necessary forms of production, as long as we are producing what people need, there will always by definition be enough income to buy it. The key is to ensure that purchasing power is distributed in such a way as to ensure that all people can access the goods they require. This will be accomplished automatically to some extent by the shorter working week, the climate job guarantee and universal public services, all of which would dramatically improve the bargaining power of labour and therefore allow the working class to claim a greater share of national income (i.e., a greater share of command over the nation’s goods). We can support this objective further by introducing living wage laws or minimum income standards, and progressive taxation policies such as maximum income thresholds and wealth taxes. Thomas Piketty has pointed out that taxing the rich is one of the single most powerful environmental policies we can deploy. This may seem radical, but in an era of ecological breakdown, it is irrational and dangerous to devote resources and energy to supporting an over-consuming class.

Jason Hickel, A New Political Economy for a Healthy Planet

[intricatecaprice]

Capitán Armando Salazar's Spain:

(circa War of Spanish Succession)

One of the things I didn't know when I first started writing fanfic for Capitán Salazar was that technically, Spain wasn't really a single unified country in his lifetime.

If you had asked them where they were from, the men of La María Silenciosa would have been more likely to tell you they were 'Castilian', or 'Aragonese', or any number of the smaller regions across the country.

To give a brief history, from the 700s-1500s AD, Spain was called Al-Andalus, and was under the control of Muslim states. You can still see a great deal of architecture from this time period especially in the South of Spain, the most famous being Alhambra palace (Granada):

But Christianity started to spread rapidly from the 1400s onwards, and by 1502 all Muslims were ordered to either convert or leave (this royal edict is still criticised today, with many debating if the edict was largely responsible for the eventual decline of Spain's economy and population).

Over the centuries, the cultures of each Spanish region became so significantly different from one another that it is not unlikely to have caused tension aboard Salazar's ship.

Southern regions retained strong Moorish influences due to their geographical proximity to Morocco, but this kept them divided culturally and politically from their Northern neighbours.

Catalonia and Aragon (North East) hated the taxes they'd been forced to pay to the new king Philip V in the early years of the war of Spanish Succession. They fought against their neighbours when the King attempted to send Castilian soldiers through their territory. The King punished those who rebelled by taking their homes and lands away - leaving them with nothing.

All of this would definitely have played heavily into the personal identity of each of the men aboard La María Silenciosa: not all of them would necessarily have shared the same language, manners, or way of looking at themselves and the world around them.

It's interesting to me, therefore, that the colour the men of La María Silenciosa wore was grey.

Not the yellow and red stripes of the Catalonian flag. Not the blue and gold coat of arms of King Philip V. No, the colour is deliberately neutral. As if by donning the grey, every man aboard La María Silenciosa is acknowledging that no matter their differences, under Capitán Salazar's command they are one.

[wherelibertydwells]

My current definition of "Left": Tends towards authoritarian collectivism (dealing with people as groups rather than persons), prefers a command and control economy with a heavily regulated marketplace, seems to prefer the use of force and coercion to deal with any problem or opportunity.

That's too wordy to say every time so here's a heads up, from now on when I say "Left" that's what I mean.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

Following on from the Maester question, any thoughts on Qyburn, Vyman and Colemon?

I’m surprised that anybody was interested in those headcanons. Glad you liked them!

Colemon is described as “young” by Pycelle and Lady Anya, but he’s also balding. He was also serving Jon Arryn for some time before his death, which makes me think he’s older than 25ish Pylos/Willamen Frey; so maybe he’s mid 30s. I’ll say he’s a Stormlander of some notable birth, maybe to a lordly house

I don’t have any evidence for the Stormlander other than Colemon sounds like Cole or even Colen (knight of Greenpools). As for the notable birth, well, Pycelle was somewhat close to him (saying he’s like a son) and it definitely wasn’t because of his natural skill at healing. Yet somehow, despite his noted youth and inexperience, he’s Maester to the second most important man in the realm. He must’ve had amazing references, and I’m guessing since they’re not skill-based, they’re family based

Stormlander noblemen are noted for their martial prowess. Coleman grew up with many tall (which he also is) warlike older brothers. He went to the Citadel as a teen after showing little skill at arms, and inadvertently after the Rebellion broke out was one of the few novices of “rebel” houses in the royalist hotbed Oldtown, causing him to dislike his time there

Took the same crash courses that the young Maesters do with medicine, ravencraft, history, and economy. He immersed himself in all the key texts, but was less efficient practically. Had difficulty passing the exams due to nervousness, as well as little faith in defending his own ideas (instead citing the works of others)

Pycelle took note of him due to his family name and that he’d quoted many of his own writings on economy during his exam. Seeing him as an intelligent but unimaginative follower, he was involved with conclave assigning Colemon to Jon Arryn when his old maester passed away, about 4 years before canon

Headcanons on Vyman and Qyburn under the cut:

Vyman is described as “old with lined hands”, so I’ll say he’s from the same generation as Pycelle/Cressen, in his late 70s. I’ll say he’s from the Vale originally, and maybe of decently distinguished birth

I say the Vale because the most characterization we get out of him is when he shows Cat the letter that Bran and Rickon are dead first thing in the morning, which she notes as “dutiful but not kind” as well as continuing to serve Emmon Frey with Riverrun’s surrender. That characterization sort of feels right for the Vale, who in fandom are stereotyped as proper/sticklers for the rules, as well as being mostly neutral in the wars thus far. As for the high birth, he carries himself with confidence, shutting Catelyn’s questions down with a “I was commanded not to speak to you”, whereas maybe a less confident person would’ve cracked under the interrogation

Studied at the Citadel for a long time, as it seems he was already an older man by the time he replaced Maester Kym at Riverrun. Most of his links were in the practical subjects such as ravencraft, economy, and above all medicine

Qyburn is noticeably younger than Pycelle, with hair more gray than white, and still tall and strong. I’ll put him as a contemporary of the also gray-haired Luwin, in his mid 60s. Because he’s such a foil to Pycelle as the Lannister-aligned Maester on the Small Council—even doing the same ostentatious dress routine once he gets the money—I’ll give him the similar backstory of from around the Oldtown area and possibly a foundling

I think it’s pretty obvious that as someone trying to ingratiate himself with the Lannisters, and traveling with an extremely brutal mercenary company in shabby clothing, that Qyburn had no “safety net” of a wealthy family on which to rely. Thus him being dechained and ejected from the Citadel was throwing him from the only life he’d known, and he resents the “gray sheep” for their narrow views. Nor does he know the Lannister situation well to bring Pia to Jaime, so I don’t think he’s from the Westerlands. I like the idea of him being from the Blackcrown area because it’s close enough to Oldtown but not in the city proper, the legendary founder of House Bulwer was said to get extremely strong drinking bull’s blood (Robert Strong parallels here), there’s the singing cliffs with its wind whistles off the twisted towers (Qyburn’s fascination with ghosts here), plus the maester is a cousin of the Tyrells.

Also GRRM likes to use young kids tormenting animals as a sign of evil (see: Maegor, Joffrey, Aerion), so I can just imagine kid!Qyburn living in a fishing village, utterly fascinated by the fact that sea cucumbers can eviscerate themselves when seriously threatened—literally eject their intestines at their pursuer—and still grow it all back after a few months. It makes sense for his first experiments to be on living animals before he “graduated” to the humans that eventually got him dechained

He studied primarily under Ebrose (healing) as per canon, and Marwyn (magic). He assisted Ebrose with gathering accounts of men suffering from Sothoryi diseases, but he grew impatient with just learning from texts and corpses, eventually deciding the maester was holding back progress by refusing to vivisect the patients. Marwyn he respected more, as he didn’t discount his stranger ideas about the residue of souls, wasn’t afraid to consort with strange Essosi sorcerers and hedge witches, nor did he respect the hard rules of the Citadel. He was sometimes joined in lectures by Luwin, also a student of magic, though Luwin quickly became skeptical and disliked Qyburn’s “ingratiating” attitude

It was through Marwyn’s fellowships at the docks that Qyburn signed on with the Brave Companions as the Maester, which back then was mostly Essosi. Part of being a sellsword meant he had to learn basic combat skills, and used a polearm due to its long reach. Needless to say, he also doubled as the company torturer

Thanks for being interested!

[tinker-tailor-soldier-tye]

Babel Review: Lost in Translation

https://www.ajtye.com/post/babel-review-lost-in-translation

Here in this house, we don't judge a book by its cover.

Except of course we do, all the time, and it's this vice that makes Babel so utterly magnetic. The gothic monochrome cityscape; the strike of glistening silver that tears through the centre of Oxford; and of course, the page edges, black as coal. "An Arcane History" the gothic cover pronounces, and with this gorgeous, arresting packaging, Babel marks itself as a book of rare ambition and style. The first of these qualities is commendable and fascinating - the other is a prison, and it's the tussle between the two that marks Babel as a uniquely frustrating work of fantasy literature.

The world of Babel is our own, nudged ever so slightly off balance: an alternative history of Victorian England, where magic has wormed its way into the halls of power and is commanding the attention of the British Empire. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell comparisons are not unwelcome here, right down to the use of footnotes to expand upon the core text. But where Clarke's novel felt more like a love song to its genre, Kuang's work is a letterbomb: a desperately angry brick thrown against the colonialist underpinnings of imperialism.

Kuang - a scholar, herself - chooses translation as both a source of in-world magic, and her thematic route in to this quagmire. In this world, magic is drawn from match pairs: a word in two separate languages, each one conveying a slightly different meaning from the other and both inscribed onto a piece of silver. When the words are spoken aloud, magic is created in that semantic gap. Great effort is put into explaining this premise further within the book, but the magic itself is rarely a core element on which the plot turns; instead it functions as a resource that the British Empire is doggedly hunting. Indeed, a lot of attention is paid to how the magic produced by the silver is often used for convenience’s sake - smoother carriages, better curtains - and available solely to the wealthy upper-class of Britain.

Peruse the goodreads review section and you'll find a lot of ire drawn against the flighty nature of the magical world building in Babel, particularly with regard to how little impact the magic of translation has had upon the populace at large. In my own experience, I was never truly moved by these complaints. The magic at work in Babel serves such a clear metaphorical purpose that the in-universe consequences seemed secondary. This will not hold true for everyone, and there’s a definite tension to be found within the way that Babel presents itself, with many of the in-universe lectures drawing attention to the magical system, and thus inviting further questions on behalf of the audience. But I think to focus purely on these gaps is to do a disservice to the evocative idea that Kuang is pursuing. Here, language is presented as a symbol of the differences between cultures, whilst translation is the way we move between those differences and discover something new (in this case, the benefits of a new system of magic). Where the book finds its teeth is in how the Empire plunders those cultural differences for its own prosperity and superiority.

On the face of it, big ideas delivered primarily through lectures should sound the death knell for any novel's entertainment value, but it is to Babel's enormous credit that it remains a compelling read throughout. Having not read The Poppy Wars I can only speculate as to how much this Dickensian tome matches the author's previous work, but my initial takeaway is that Babel is intentionally written to take advantage of a more minimalist style of writing: a straight-talking economy of prose that benefits the narrative tremendously for its clarity...though perhaps less so for its vivacity.

This brings us back to the notion of ‘covers’, or perhaps more accurately, aesthetics’. It doesn’t take a lot of digging to see that how Babel presents itself is clearly very important to Kuang’s artistic vision. From the use of epigraphs in each chapter to harken back to Victorian literature, to the demarcation of the novel into five shakespearean acts (complete with interludes), there's a very conscious effort on display to use style as a dramatic device.

For the record: I've never been one to hold judgement on authors who adopt another writing 'voice' as your own. However, I do think this becomes an issue once the adopted voice constricts the story you are telling, and in this sense I think Babel is less successful. For as clear and compelling as the text often is, there are long stretches that feel curiously leaden - devoid of flourish or feeling, where another less formal take on the material would flourish. Story turns often arrive out of nowhere and without flair, whilst the minute-to-minute dialogue feels curiously stiff.

There’s an argument to be made that, for all Babel postures at being a spiritual successor to Strange & Norrell, it never manages to commit insofar as the prose itself is concerned. Clarke’s novel was anything but economic in its presentation, famously indulging in a more performative nineteenth-century style of writing often compared to Jane Austen. I’m hard pressed to say what Babel is emulating, because it definitely isn’t Austen, and considering Kuang’s own description of it as a “big ponderous Dickensian bildungsroman”, it doesn’t seem to evoke much of Dickens’ extravagant passage construction either.

It would be one thing to consider this as a disconnect between form and function, but it’s much more pressing and confounding to note the lack of theatricality on display - a vanishing confidence that lays bare the didacticism that so many other reviewers have been quick to point out.

Indeed, it’s not a stretch to say that didacticism - the abandonment of subtext in order to express messages directly to the viewer - is perhaps the most commonly discussed part of Babel. It runs inescapably through the novel’s veins, from the philosophising mouths of the characters, to the thudding footnotes which abandon Strange & Norrell's whimsy for mini-lectures of varying interest. It’s obvious by now that Babel is not short of ambition, but it is to the books discredit that it elucidates the vast majority of its opinions and ideas within the opening 100 pages. Only the "violence" hinted at by the book's full title remains - but we'll get to that shortly.

Truthfully, I think didacticism gets a bit of a bad rep in much the same way that exposition does. Tutorials and reviews online often mark exposition as a failure of writing, yet there is not a single piece of work that does not exposit at some point and to some extent - it's just about doing it in the most appropriate way. Christopher Nolan’s Inception is comprised of 80% exposition (citation needed), and yet is totally thrilling, revelling in its ideas all the way to the credits. The same can be said for the way a story uses didacticism - there can be a great catharsis in a work that proclaims its own identity.

There is catharsis to be found in Babel, too. Whilst the authorial voice on display is clear and calm, Kuang sets about dismantling myths of abolition with such thoroughness that the anger behind the pen becomes palpable. It’s fun to feel like a Molotov cocktail is being thrown into the annals of history, and the book’s rumination on the necessity of sacrifice to change a country’s mind will linger with me for a long time.

But these are still just ideas, waiting patiently for Babel to dramatically connect them to its characters. Unfortunately, the great disappointment of Babel is in the flatness of its core cast: a motley crew of students built out of philosophies and scones, flanked by an unending rogues gallery of cartoon racists. There are flashes of complexity to be found - particularly in the anguished (yet passive) protagonist, Robin - but these are rarely convincing, or handled with much deftness. Instead, this is character growth as an equation: x has happened to y, therefore they will do z. What’s most fascinating here is that there is no easy fix for this problem; no other writing decision that could have changed the end result. Just the simple, dawning realisation that these characters are too stiff, and that in each attempt to excavate their personalities, I imposed a vision over the text: an image of the author, desperately wishing that they were back writing the story’s lectures, where the book's aesthetic and ideas become as one.

In the year that I have owned Babel, I have turned it over in my hands many times and marvelled. I have traced my fingers over the dusty black page edges and across the tower stencilled on the back cover, wondering what gothic horrors a building such as that could draw out of a writer. Inside, on the front page of my copy, is R.F. Kuang's signature, which remains a welcomed physical reminder of the person behind this work - a person of rare talent, intellect and empathy. These things represent Babel as a piece of aesthetic art - a work of care and attention that promises a great deal of ambition. I can only be so disappointed that the contents cannot match that exquisite cover.

[bimboficationblues]

if marx believes higher phase communism will be so rid of narrow self-interest and petty disagreement that the world economy can function without material incentives, then why is democratic decision-making still necessary? in a world with such people, couldn't disputes swiftly end with consensus?

so like I think there are a number of confused claims here.

I don't think this is an accurate description about Marx's beliefs about communism. First, because "narrow self-interest" and "petty disagreement" aren't the reasons the world economy works the way it does now (or did then), so getting rid of them is not really a first-order goal. These are both moralist explanations of why the global economy sucks so bad, which is something that we might be interested in, but definitely not what Marx was interested in.

Second, Marx definitely believed people needed material incentives to cooperate (communist revolution can be understood as a form of self-interest), he just didn't think money/markets were good devices - ethically or in terms of efficiency - for making decisions about what gets produced and how those things get distributed.

Marx was "anti-political" in the sense that he believed that the definition of politics was class domination - arbitrary rule - and he wanted to see that abolished. But in the more positive sense that we sometimes use the term "politics" - processes of deliberation and negotiation over community goals and resource allocation - it's clear that this was something he was pretty attentive to. I think Marx's Inferno is instructive here:

Debate, deliberation, and disagreement, by contrast, are aspects of social life in Marx’s terminology. This must be kept in mind when we read Marx … “imagine, for a change, a union [Verein] of free human beings, working with communal means of production, and expending their many individual labor-powers self-consciously as one social labor-power.” This is Marx considering a form of production in which the fetishism of the commodity, and hence impersonal domination, disappears. It is widely read as Marx’s presentiment of the communist future.

What is not widely noted is that it is certainly an allusion to Owen’s factory at New Lanark, and to the cooperative experiments that sprung up in its wake … As opposed to the a posteriori mediation of production brought about by market exchange, or the a priori mediation of the command of capital, Marx saw in Owen’s cooperatives the germ of a mode of production mediated a priori by discourse. Cooperative production compels individual producers and consumers to justify their preferences and to make decisions in common about what and how to produce. These are the features that would recommend it to Marx.

Trying to imagine a global system of interdependent cooperatives managing all production by nested communal deliberation certainly gives rise to all manner of questions and doubts about matters logistical and procedural. They are, however, different questions and doubts than those arising at the prospect of a global and technocratic command economy, the means of a priori coordination that has generally been attributed to Marx. If Marx’s optimism about our ability to work out the institutional questions of free and cooperative self-government was misplaced, this does not impeach his diagnosis of our need for it.

[hacawijo]

My Top Ships of 2022 Countdown

10. Timmy and Zeta (Love Island USA) - Okay yes, this is a real-life couple, but the point of dating shows is to ship real-life couples, and Timmy and Zeta are the best. They both came into the show with the right balance of self-awareness and optimism, and they were by FAR the most mature and likable people on the show.

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9. Aaron and Bobby (Bros) - Definitely the rom-com couple of 2022! Aaron is cute, but Billy Eichner’s Bobby is definitely the reason I ship this couple so much. He’s a gifted comedian and actor, and it’s really cool to see the perpetually sarcastic Eichner playing a little earnest in this movie. The ship itself is well-developed and I particularly love their P-Town moments.

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8. Aloy and Kotallo (Horizon: Forbidden West) - This is the first of several crack ships on this list. Aloy is the protagonist in the Open-world RPG Horizon: Forbidden West and Kotallo is one of her companions. I love Aloy from the first game and she continues to be awesome in the second. Kotallo’s voice acting is deep and commanding (but not loud) and he’s a great blend of competent and tortured (like a cross between Rowan from Throne of Glass and Hunt Athalar from Crescent City) and I found many great fanfics to feed my interest in them together! Full disclosure, there’s no indication of romance between the two in the game and a lot of people speculate that Aloy may be queer or asexual.

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7. Rhaenyra and Alicent (HotD) - I’m sure I don’t need to expand on this too much given that House of the Dragon is a worldwide sensation. Needless to say, I think Olivia Cooke is incredible as older Alicent in the show, and there’s something incredibly tragic about the love they had for each other (platonic or romantic) being destroyed by the men around them. I do read a romantic undertone in their relationship, but I don’t know that either of them realizes it themselves.

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6. Bruce and Selina (The Batman) - The Batman was probably my favorite movie of 2022 and I loved the chemistry between Selina and Bruce. I’m glad that she’s more than a love interest for him - she has a real role in the story - and there’s something pretty lovely about how she teases Bruce because he’s so awkward. It makes sense that Bruce would be awkward in romantic interactions! He’s not a stud! He’s a traumatized man who has devoted all of his time to destroying crime in Gotham, of course he doesn’t know how to flirt! But it’s just even more endearing and a cool, (relatively) un-explored take on Batman.

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5. Draco and Hermione (Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Falling in Love — among others) - It would be difficult for me to not include my OTP on this list. Not just because they’re my OTP, but also because the Dramione fanfic economy is incredible! New works are published and updated everyday, many of which are better quality than a lot of published novels. Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Falling in Love was my absolute favorite - incredibly well-written, with a believable and multilayered interpretation of both Draco and Hermione’s characterization. Unfortunately the slow burn is agonizing, and the fluffy part of me wishes there was more time in the story where they’re truly together, but it’s a great story. Below illustration by @elivrayn - who is insanely talented!

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4. Janine and Gregory (Abbott Elementary) - Janine and Gregory are like those two friends you have that would be perfect for each other and who deserve to be a lot happier than they are. Obviously the show has to keep up a will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic— it’s practically a requirement of sitcoms like Abbott Elementary thanks to Jim and Pam from The Office — but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating to watch them dance around each other! I love the characters, the actors, and the show, and I won’t be surprised if I eventually rank them among my favorite TV sitcom couples.

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3. Lidia and Ruhn (House of Sky and Breath) - HOSAB came out at the beginning of the year and so I almost forgot about this great new ship! Their couple name (NightBright) is fire, their circumstances are beautifully tragic, and Lydia is especially a fascinating new character in the series. Ruhn was already a fan-fave, so SJM probably knew she needed to DELIVER for his ship. Their relationship is particularly aesthetic and ethereal, and the cliffhanger at the end of HOSB is so incredibly heart wrenching, maybe more so than any other couple SJM has ever written. by @sncinder - INCREDIBLE

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2. Leighton and Alicia (Sex Lives of College Girls) - So this might technically be more of a 2021 ship, but things DID happen for them in 2022 AND I only watched season one this year. Leighton is one of the best characters on the show and following her journey of understanding privilege through season 1 feels pretty realistic, as does her hesitance to come out of the closet and it’s affect on her relationship with Alicia, whom she loves. In Season 2 she does come out and has a whirlwind semester, only to realize in the end that she doesn’t want to be in a sorority or date someone who is close-minded and rude (RIP Leighton and Tatum). She and Alicia reunite and even in just those last two episodes she seems SO MUCH HAPPIER. I love them.

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1. Hannah and Fox (Hook, Line, and Sinker) - My number 1 for 2022 really just couldn’t be anything but Hannah and Fox. It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey was lovely, such a great read, especially because Piper feels a lot more fleshed out than many female romantic leads. That being said, it’s Hannah and Fox’s love story (a sequel to Piper and Brendan’s) that truly blew me out of the water. Fox’s grappling with the expectations of the people around him and the way he’s constantly over sexualized by everyone around him is heartbreaking. People expected him to be a player and so he played into their expectations because it felt better than being rejected for trying to have something real. Hannah and Fox are so completely lovely, and their ending is perfect. It’s refreshing to read a het romance where the woman is ultimately the one who feels more self-assured about who they are and the one who is positioned to do the big romantic gesture, even if she doesn’t see it as such.

Honorable Mentions/Ship Seeds of 2022

Ithan and the Fendyr heir from House of Sky and Breath

Sandman and Johanna Constantine from Sandman

James and Erin from Derry Girls

[soundofseclusion]

49. Tinykin

Release: 2022, PC/PS4/PS5/Switch/Xbox One/Xbox Series Beaten: August 25th, Xbox Series S (Game Pass) Playtime: 6h 25m (Main Story), 9h 10m (100%*)

My first impression of Tinykin was that it was going to be a Pikmin-like, but as it turns out, Tinykin is more of a collectathon platformer which just so happens to feature a tiny, commandable army as one of the collectibles on each stage. It's really delightful, but definitely not as Pikmin-adjacent as I expected. I think this direction is good in its own right.

My favorite thing about Tinykin is the worldbuilding and lore. You encounter several species of insects living inside an abandoned home (which seems massive as you are to-scale with the bugs), and the insects have their own cultures, societies, social classes, politics, religion, history, agriculture, economy, etc, etc. Like, it's surprisingly in-depth. And it's a total joy. The game also has a "bigger picture" sort of story going on above the layer of the bug society which remains mysterious and captivating the whole way through, giving you bits and pieces of deep lore through hidden areas and collectibles. It all ties together quite nicely and is, overall, just a lot deeper and more cohesive than I expected coming in to Tinykin.

It's unfortunately leaving Game Pass at the first of September, but I would still recommend picking it up on any of the systems it's available on if it sounds even remotely interesting. Just, again, don't go into it expecting Pikmin. Expect a relatively straightforward and non-challenging platformer collectathon with a ton of deep lore to dig into.

*My 100% run is more like a 98% run because I couldn't be bothered to find all 1k-1.2k pollen in every single level.