#critical complexity

[ontonix]

Complexity Science is Dead.

The so-called Complexity Science has been around for a few decades now. Chaos, as well as complexity, were buzzwords in the 1980s, pretty much like Artificial Intelligence is today. There are Complexity Institutes in many countries. They speak of Complexity Theory. In a beautiful and recent video called “The End of Science”, Sabine Hossenfelder, speaks of Complexity Science and how it has not…

[tevinter]

is this anything.

[cy-lindric]

Hi! So, while scroling through Pinterest, i came across this art:

which was credited to you. i cannot find the complet artwork in your profile, so i wanted to ask if youre the artist responsible for this piece.

(btw, your renditions of medieval clothing are beautiful!)

Hello ! I did make this a long time ago and the reason you didn't find it is probably because it's almost a decade old (and also very badly tagged). You can find the original post here. I think back then I had no idea what actual medieval clothing might look like, lol. How far we've come.

[hinamie]

these 3 and their weird catty love triangle have bewitched me body and soul

[invinciblerodent]

Ngl, some people's "I wasn't allowed to be an irredeemably evil shitbird, ergo Veilguard is not an RPG" argument is extra funny to me, because I don't actually think there is a conceivable narrative in which, if your Rook did something as objectively amoral as selling people into slavery, they wouldn't wake up the next morning floating untethered in the raw Fade with Neve's bootprint on their ass, and the Lighthouse no more than a distant blip on the edge of their vision.

Like there is a lot to get into here that I just don't have the time or the spoons to go through, but I'd argue that one of the biggest strengths of Veilguard's writing is that the main cast are all very well-defined characters with their own sets of morals, ethics, and goals, and they collectively have more than enough of a backbone that if Rook did something that proved them incapable of leading the team to the story's climax and/or proved them to be of no benefit to them, they wouldn't fail their quest: they would just swiftly and efficiently get rid of Rook.

[krisdreemurrs]

hey can anyone who hated season 2 but still loves arcane and it's characters like this post. I'm tired of seeing mindless praise or posts hating the characters for the bad choices the writers made

[turbo-virgins]

Low key very tired of people responding to veilguard criticism with something along the lines of “lol these people have no media literacy, didn’t you understand what the game was telling you??” Yes, yes I understand what the game was trying to tell me. That doesn’t mean I have to like it or the way the writers went about it.

Also the whole argument of “well, the dragon age fandom proved they couldn’t handle xyz controversial character/element of the story so that’s why veilguard had very little references to those things” kinda grinds my gears a bit. I don’t think it can be proven with 100% certainty what writing decisions were made based on past fandom reactions to the other games, but I do think it would be an incredibly shitty move to simplify or remove complexity from a story just because there might be a portion of the audience who doesn’t get it. “The fandom couldn’t even handle Vivienne” Yeah a good amount of people dismissed her as a selfish snooty bitch, but I didn’t and a lot of other people didn’t and to remove complex and interesting characters like her on the basis that enough people “won’t get it” just feels like a disservice to all of us.

[mythalism]

call me crazy but there is a difference between treating your adult players like they are new to the world and treating your adult players like they have the memory of a goldfish and the vocabulary of a 9 year old

[autumndragon]

i'm rewatching the night and the fury because it's one of my favorite dagur-related episodes, and,

the look on dagur's face when he declares hiccup his enemy and hiccup accepts it without hesitation, lowkey hurts me.

i mean

his expression changes from anger to surprise to upset.

it makes me think some part of dagur was hoping for hiccup to object to it, to say they were still brothers or something like that, and that it pained him to hear hiccup didn't actually care.

dagur made such a big deal out of them being brothers, and I think he expected hiccup to feel the same, which probably made the "betrayal" worse for him, fueling his anger and need for revenge. in his eyes, hiccup didn't even fight for their brotherhood, picking a dragon over him with no hesitation, and it enraged him.

[simpforsolas]

solas dragon age is like what if there was a man who kept running into the trolley problem over and over again except the stakes are thousands of lives no matter what choice is made. and instead of focusing on the lives saved through action, he and everyone else instead decide to focus on the people he actively killed through making his choices and villainize him for it until he and everyone else sees only that narrative.

and then rook dragon age is like if someone else was presented with the trolley problem and you think they're going to learn the same lessons and gain the same pains and regret as the first man except instead they a) end up putting the blame on solas for their decision to switch trolley tracks at the beginning and then after that b) god descends from heaven and tells them "it's ok you're perfect let's make this issue easy for you so there's a clear right answer" and uses magic to teleport away the people on one path of the trolley so they don't have to make any meaningful sacrifice.

and then rook turns to solas and goes "see you're such a stupid bad guy, i was in the same situation as you and i made Good Choices because i'm a Good Guy" and in the end solas and everyone else are basically like "yeah that's true time for solas to give up his silly little plans that had no merit and let's not even bother seeing if we can address the problems he was trying to fix in different ways" and rook gets to end the game pretending like they faced the same difficult decisions as solas but rose above when he couldn't.

[bramblebeau]

Alright I told myself I wouldn't interact with fandom when s2 came out, and I haven't and don't plan to except to say this about people deciding Caitlyn is the Worst or that the writing is OOC.

As someone who has had a family member violently killed, I cannot stress how much it shakes up everything you thought you were and stood for. My beliefs in proportionate compassionate justice and the rights of all human beings are some of the strongest I have (stronger now because of the way that experience affected me personally), but they were pushed to the absolute limit when it came to an individual who had killed my loved one, showed no remorse, and laughed in our faces outside court, among other things.

People generally like to believe it wouldn't be them or their peace-loving family members being talked down from seriously considering violent revenge, consequences be damned. People like to believe they wouldn't lash out at people closest to them under that pressure, that they wouldn't build walls around the kindest and most sensitive parts of themselves because those parts are the ones feeling pain you never thought possible, that they wouldn't stalk the killer, make notes on all their family and friends, and fuck up their hands punching walls in anger wishing so badly it was flesh and bone because they can't handle the fact that there's no way to turn back time to stop it all from happening. People like to think they're "better" than that. But the reality is messy and painful as hell.

With Caitlyn, she has the added guilt of having actually had the opportunity to stop Jinx before she fired the rocket, but she hesitated just long enough for it to result in the deaths of her mother and other councillors and in the cities being plunged into chaos. Not only that, but the person close to her she's lashing out at is the person who caused her to hesitate, and just so happens to be the sister of the killer.

Furthermore, her behaviour is entirely in character. We have seen her set up as someone who becomes obsessed with achieving a goal and will do pretty much anything she wants to get there. In S1, we agreed with her methods because her goal was exposing and taking down Silco, and because it led to Vi being released. In S2, she's doing a similar thing but it's fuelled by fear and a type of pain she doesn't know how to deal with, rather than being fuelled by a need to prove herself and solve a case, and it leads to her making morally questionable decisions and to hurting Vi. She admits herself, albeit privately to Vi, that she does not know what she's doing and doesn't know how to fill this hole in her chest (and the hole in the city leadership). She has been sheltered from the real world for almost all her life, and as a result she has no experience of functioning or making decisions under this kind of pressure. The real world blew up in her face in the worst way and she was given power and a loaded rifle, and then shoved into an even more elevated position by a very experienced warlord who is manipulating the shit out of the whole situation.

I'm not saying that you have free rein to hurt people when you're grieving and facing extreme stress. (If you think that's what I'm saying then idk I'm not sure there's much hope for you in terms of critical thinking skills). What I'm saying is that Caitlyn is exhibiting pretty normal human behaviour that most people would be susceptible to in those circumstances, not the behaviour of someone who is some kind of heartless abusive bastard.

TLDR: Caitlyn is being written in a way that completely makes sense and is also not OOC, and if someone told me there would be no chance of them reacting in similar ways I simply would not believe them.

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

I've been thinking about CR's adaptation of TLOVM and how it was challenged to keep the stakes high with KO's and deaths. This got me on the topic of TM9 and how its deaths impacted the story in the campaign...and whether those would translate well to the animated show

With that being said:

Note that I'm not including the following:

Permadeaths

Frumpkin's various deaths and subsequent resummonings

Yasha's death in C2E131, given she didn't need to be revived after waking up

[thenationofzaun]

"Vi and Jinx didn't get sidelined, it's an ensemble cast show so of course the other main characters deserved the spotlight too"

The "ensemble cast" show:

They should've thought about their ensemble cast before centering the entire first season and almost all their marketing on Jinx and Vi

[tackykachowch]

Oh yeah I forgot that there's this opinion that Silco "was blindsided by power and wealth" and "lost his way" and "he only did what he did to benefit himself all along" etc etc. Uh. Where- where did you get that from? I'm not even being sarcastic or something, I'm genuinely curious how you can come to this conclusion.

He operates from a crappy office in The Last Drop and the only attributes of wealth he has are cigars and whiskey(?). My man had one pair of pants for 10+ years and only got a fancy coat to look more intimidating. Besides, when chembarons proposed to give back the gemstone to Piltover so their sales don't drop even harder Silco refused. Also he was ready to give up his power when Jayce made imprisoning Jinx a requirement for Zaun to gain independence. Sure, he IS motivated to keep his daughter safe, but it would also mean that his goal will finally be achieved, so there's nothing left for him to do. Both wealth and power are only means to achieve a goal to him. He also doesn't really display that he gets the kick out of it, unlike councilors in Piltover.

"Well yes he wants Zaun to be independent, but only as he personally sees it" when did he EVER say that??😭😭😭😭 Every time he speaks on the topic he only mentions how he wants Zaunites to have opportunities, respect, "more than (Piltover's) runoff". Like- that's literally everything he ever said about this. All that matters to him is independence, he couldn't care less about everything else.

As to "losing his way"...idk I think this can only be attributed to pre-drowning Silco. Because after it he pretty much decided to stick to what he now believed in forever, and at no point except the finale he went south from his beliefs.

Silco isn't "misguided" or "corrupt" or any other similar definition. He's a character who chose to become a monster to bring change to his people. And as s2 didn't do anything about resolving this conflict, he was never really proven wrong.

[pocketgalaxies]

crazy that travis sandwiched this wildly complicated sensitive brave leader and scared man in between grogory strongjaw and fuckin c-pop

[scattergoriesofevil]

Melora: My siblings have an obsession with the humanoids and it’s really weirding me out.

Also Melora: Where’s my favorite halfling? Where’s my bestest boy? There he is! Here’s a treat.