#i also understand that some things are SUPPOSED to be inconsistent because its ultimately a mystery. but still

[samodivas]

so i actually played The Suicide of Rachel Foster and I gotta admit, the negative reviews about the storyline had a great point 😐

good: graphics, atmosphere, little details they put in, etc.

bad: everything else? it started off really strong but there were a few points that either made no sense or were just handled very badly.

a) Nicole didn't really have enough of a struggle with her dad tbh. It's like he existed solely as a good guy in her mind, despite evidence to the contrary. I'm sure she would've been a lot more torn up about it.

b) Nicole's mom is also just ??? the woman clearly hated Rachel but besides that, we only get two lines about her from Nicole. basically the bitch hardass mom vs cool interesting dad? like come on

c) there is not a single point during which someone calls out Rachel's 'relationship' with Leonard for what it is. like. come on. it's horrifying

d) the fucking 'oh my gawd she was PREGNANT' cliche is so overdone, I don't even think it's worth acknowledging. Just lazy on the writers' part.

e) The things related to Irving towards the end were pretty bad. They made zero sense and honestly could've ended better.

f) it feels like the game is trying to convince you that Rachel is alive and then it just... gives up on that entirely? there's so much "evidence" that people, including Leonard, thought she was alive.... Nicole starts to think so, too, at some point. and yet....?

g) the creepy ghost/lights/whispers stuff never gets explained. which i guess is good for a mystery game but I would've liked a bit more consistency.

h) I feel like the reveal about how Rachel died does actually make sense because it's a better 'twist' than the official assumption.

i) for a game named after Rachel Foster, she sure as shit didn't get any real agency? like it's just her abuser who gets the limelight and Nicole remembers how perfect and 'mature' that girl was compared to her.

j) I spent the entire game lowkey waiting for a reveal that Leonard wasn't a piece of shit, and yet that never came. It's like the entire narrative was trying to excuse him as someone eccentric... I was genuinely thinking that the allegations against him would've been a misunderstood rumour and that truth was something else entirely. like that she was abused, but by someone else, and that Leonard was actually a positive influence... but no, it was even worse than I thought.

k) there was actually an inconsistency that bothered me where Nicole said 'Christmas of 1980' was the last one they spent together, and yet around the Christmas of 1983 is when Rachel actually died. That's a pretty big gap and it was definitely a mistake on the writers' (or VA's?) part

l) I think the ending was bad on many, many levels. Also irresponsible considering the subject matter.

[yuurei20]

I've got a question if you wouldn't mind answering!

I saw that the voice actor for Grim commented that Grim always ends his phrases with the word "zo", I was wondering if it had any meaning? Or if maybe it's just something to make his character more unique? Similarly, I've noticed Ruggie tend to use a lot of "su" at the end of his phrases, and I was wondering the same thing, if it had any meaning at all or if it's just supposed to be a character quirk!

Ty for your hard work and don't feel pressured to answer this if you don't want to! 🫶🏻

Hello hello! Thank you very much, you are so kind! ^^

Yes yes, Grim's Sugiyama comments on how difficult Grim's "zo" was for him in his interview (published in vol. 1 of the fanbook).

"Zo" can have a meaning of its own (I liked this explanation on jlptsensei.com, for those who may be curious), but it is generally not used in the way that Grim is using it 🐱 He adds it just to everything!

And verbal ticks like this come up a lot in all kinds of Japanese-language media! Videos games, manga, anime, TV dramas, comedians, etc.

Ruggie's "su" is also kind of a verbal tic, and also has its own meaning:

Discussed in more detail in another post (ref: Idia's "degozaru"), the Japanese language has the word "desu," which has different forms depending on how polite you want to be!

Grim and Jade use the word in two of its more normal (least slang-like) ways, casual for Grim (da) and more polite for Jade (desu).

Ruggie is also using it in a casual way, dropping the "de" part and only using the "su," but it all means the same thing ^^

A verbal tic is even the catalyst of Spectral Soiree!

While not as often as Grim, Malleus is also known to end his sentences in "zo."

He keeps this speaking pattern even during Spectral Soiree, when he is pretending to be possessed by the ghost of an emperor.

But he then slips mid-conversation, saying "zo yo."

Leona noticing this inconsistency starts a domino effect that ultimately compromises Malleus' charade, leading to Malleus' confession (more here).

So verbal tics can be very important! ^^

Crowley's "since I am kind" might also be considered a verbal tic, as it is generally repeated in the exact same way throughout the original game (original-game-to-EN comparison here!).

I think I will add a deep dive into the various speech patterns there are to my TODO list because this post keeps getting longer ww But here are a few pick-ups for right now:

・Idia's use of "degozaru," "-shi," otaku-/net-slang and his stutter are unique to his character.

・Ace will often say "papatto," for getting something done quickly.

・Epel has many things going on with his various forms of speech, and his "kana" might count as a verbal tic?

・Vil will often say "choudai" (apologies for the twitter link)

・Lilia will often use the adjective "rippa," which is similar to admirable/splendid/impressive/respectable/etc. in English!

・Riddle will often end questions with "dai"

・A line that Riddle also says before battles, Riddle will often say "ii dokyo ga oari dane," which is something like "to have some nerve." Other characters will say variations on "ii dokyo" (usually Vil and Leona), but this full phrase is unique to Riddle.

・Riddle will also often say "owakari dane," usually to mean "You understand?," as in, "if you don't do as I say, you understand what is going to happen to you, yes?" (re: he is going to behead someone).

・Maybe my favorite, Rollo will often end his sentences with "kane."

In the way Rollo is using it, it is just another verbal tic, but then there is the Bell of Salvation from the event or 救いの鐘 in Japanese:

Sukui no Kane. "Kane" means bell!

Rollo is ending so many of his sentences with the word "bell" ^^ It is wordplay!

Language is personalized to each and every character in the game, to the point that most of the time (on JP) you can tell which character is speaking before they even enter the room based upon verbal tics and honorifics ^^ It is all very interesting, but unfortunately all very impossible to put across on EN!

[skaruresonic]

The thing about multiverses is that the streams inherently have to cross. The intersecting dimensions/worlds/isekai/whatever must overlap at some point.

And, well. Modern Sonic has met his Classic self, which makes sense since both iterations originate from the games, but not his X self. Or his OVA self. Or his Boom self. Or his IDW self. Or his Archie self. Or his SatAM self. Or his Underground self. Or his AoSTH self. Or his Dash and Spin self. Or his films self. Or...

You can't really call if it a multiverse if it doesn't perform the function a multiverse is designed for, right? Like, if this is supposed to be some grand cross-media multiverse, then it absolutely sucks at being one. None of Sonic's offshoot media have made it into the games with very few and very scattered possible exceptions, and those exceptions are so negligible that you'd have to squint to count them.

It's been going on three decades and still no Sally in the games. It's been 11 years since X was last broadcast, and Tails seems to be doing just fine without having mentioned Cosmo even once. You'd think if these canons were so integral to the games like people say, the games would mention them once in a while, but this deafening tide of radio silence very much begs to differ.

In addition, I have to say I think Iizuka's idea to unify the canons, whatever that means, is at best misguided (though understandable, given how adamant fans are that the games be anything except themselves) and at worst will wreck the games canon.

The games are not as inconsistent as people make them out to be. Half the time, this sense of inconsistency arises from folks' expectations that the games to abide by offshoot canon, even though the games have never agreed to that to begin with. (The other half coming from illiteracy and the refusal to see the games' lore as worth proper analysis.) Forcing square pegs into round holes will only stunt what is actually there and break what wasn't broken.

There's also a lot to be said about not writing to appease an audience that refuses to meet you halfway. You see the popularity lies with offshoot media because they're Not The Games and therefore Automatically Better(tm), but will it really matter in ten years when they inevitably move onto something else?

Ultimately, it's a good thing that none of these media are canon to the games. The games are the only canon that have a solid grip on its characters. (Note I'm not saying they're perfect; just more structurally sound.) If you have to contort them to fit some other mold, you'll just cause unnecessary confusion.

[kdnss77]

August Underground's Penance (2007)

basic info: directed by Fred Vogel and co-written with Cristie Whiles. this sequel forms the final part of the August Underground trilogy.

overall ratings: imdb: 3,5/10 rotten tomatoes: 50% letterboxd: 2.3/5

plot summary: for the grand finale, we're set back to a narrative provided by only a duo - which consists of Peter and his girlfriend Crusty, for a change. they, once again, go for an uncontrollable spree around the town, violating their victims in equally ruthless and sickening ways. we can gladly observe our protagonists cut a homeless man open, letting his intestines stick its gurgling contents freely out, Peter beating a man to death with a hammer, cutting a fetus out of a dead woman's body (who was actually played by Vogel's wife) or them breaking into a random family's place, in the aim of (unsuccessfully) raping and (with a fortunate result this time) strangling its members. the lovebirds are also shown feeding an alligator a dead rat, as well as doing so to a lion with several pieces of a dead deer. the ending is rather bitter-sweet on the other hand, as the production finishes with Crusty committing suicide by asphyxiating herself to death.

my thoughts: the first thing that caught my eye, and therefore made a huge difference in comparison with the previous movies, is the high definition footage. no more degraded, seemingly obscure and inconsistent graphics. one could say that this little, yet ultimately enormous cosmetic change prompts the whole found footage convention to vanish. well, kind of, but we do get something even better in return. a better understanding of Peter's (mostly his) and Crusty's characters, ladies and gentlemen. or at least potential tropes, that could lead to profound conclusions on their personal experiences, trauma and inner relationship cracks. that is, for instance, Crusty is revealed to get frustrated because of Peter's inability to get his thing up - in AU's Mordum he's also called a faggot by her, which might point to his sexuality and, at the same time, stand as a main reason for all the friction piling up between them. this causes their killing spree to gradually exacerbate, inclining Crusty to finally snap towards the end of the movie. however, Peter isn't as entertaining as a person alone. his worth is defined by his tremendous actions. and it seems like he's well aware of that - by pursuing in all those monstrosities, staying consistent with his violent capabilities, he's the last man standing after all. he persists. i feel that's the right turn of events. be boring, do crime! nevertheless, although the final part of the trilogy did fulfill my primary expectations regarding character development, it hasn't possessed a remarkable spot in my mind. i've read about Fred Vogel mentioning it's his personal favorite among the remaining two productions and i totally get it. it has it all: gore, but not that much so that it doesn't outshine the actual plot, characters with their individual burdens and an intriguing camerawork. i'm not entirely sure if it's because of the lack of the original, deformed-like style of filming or because i got what i wanted. there's something missing and it bothers me.

my rating (on a scale from 1 to 5): 2/5

no favorite quote for this one. i wanted to mention a particular scene instead. after the duo had broken into a family's house, Crusty seemed different at the sight of the presents and the occasion of Christmas itself. besides form the arousement resulting from strangling the girl. i wonder if it was straightforwardly connected to some questionable trauma she experienced before. i suppose so.

the images were found by me on the internet, credit to their original uploaders.

[spade-club]

Okay. Feeling really fucky over this. Hoping someone has insight for me.

My best friend is, yk, like me. Very inconsistent on how they feel about a lot of things to a strange degree. Has a lot of conflicting ideas and opinions. Anyway so as it turns out they ultimately dont see what we are to eachother the same way I do. I feel a bit... used? And lead on by the idea that after all we have been through and all we have been for eachother that we are just friends and theres nothing else we could call it.

Going into this I had known they didnt need to be in a relationship right now, I was aware of that. I just figured after 2 months of us continuing to get closer and become what is in many ways partners that maybe it had changed. Its not like we talked about it before really, so I felt safe assuming things may have changed. I still consider them ultimately to be my friend but there are many parts of them I see differently and I feel kinda pushed back and restricted by the idea that what I have with those personalities couldnt be considered anything serious despite it very much so being something, and that something being very significant to me.

I'm struggling to find a way to encourage them to allow some of their personalities to express themselves and feel how they want towards me individually and also understanding that if I were to be officially dating those personalities that things would still be complicated for them as a whole. We both are also very avoidant when talking of our disordered behavior which makes it... a lot harder to convey what I mean. I'm hardly sure a word of this makes sense right now to you guys.

I'm just nervous because after them telling me that ALL of this is just a friendship to them, I'm supposed to act like thats all fine and continue on like nothing's different. They'll probably decide to come over again tomorrow, and I wont want to make anything awkward by trying to say anything so I'll keep it all in and ugh. I just wish that conversation had any closure but I'm too fucked up by circumstance and everything else going on around me and now I'm just stuck in the middle of this. Not knowing where its going to end. I figured this would be an easy conversation because I thought they would think like... "yeah its cool to call this a relationship if thats what it is half the time even if the other half we are friends. I am okay with it being both things and thats what it is so might as well call it that" but thats just really not at all how it went. Now I'm just kinda lost here and I dont want to say anything that'll ruin anything. But I also feel very discontent at where things have left off.

[adobe-outdesign]

May I get your thoughts on my sweet slug friend Gastrodon?

Is it even possible to go wrong with a nudibranch? I don't know, but what I do know is that this is a great line as a whole. The east and west coast forms are neat, basically serving as an example of allopatric evolution (almost similar to regionals in a way, except rooted in location rather than continent). Interestingly, some beta sprites suggest it was supposed to be one form only originally, and the east and west coast thing wasn't done until later:

For Shellos specifically, I like the yellow outlines and the bright colors, which are both pretty sea slug-esq. I'm also glad that the line as a whole isn't overly slug-like (having heads separate from the body and whatnot), but keeps with the slug-like body shape instead of becoming something else entirely.

My only complaints are the color inconsistencies--the west sea form is pink with a white underbelly, but the east sea is blue with a green underbelly. Based on Gastrodon's colors, either the west sea should've had a brown underbelly, or the east sea should've had a white one. I personally would've gone for the later, seeing as it already has white on the head tentacles and that would keep the line from looking too similar to their evos.

I'm also not huge on the yellow mouth outlines, mostly because they run together with the yellow eyes and mantle stripes while still being a seperate element. Also, the nose dots(?) are a strange thing to include. Other than that, though, I like these guys a lot.

Between the two, I like the "wings" on the east coast more, but I like the colors on the east coast more (especially once it evolves). I think I ultimately lean more towards the east coast, but both are good.

While Shellos is solid, I really love Gastrodon. Not only do the designs get even better, but they also gain a third eye (though unfortunately, this appears to be a marking and not a real eye. They really should've just gone for it; I mean, why not?) and some very nice colors.

Honestly, I don't even have much to critique on these guys. The lines add some nice patterns and really pull the eye through the designs well, the eyes are unique and striking, and the mouths have been improved significantly. I guess the underbelly on the east coast form could be a bit lighter to contrast better with the green, but that's about it.

(Side note: I love that these guys squak. It's just such an unexpected noise for a sea slug to make and yet it fits them 100%).

One thing that I will say though is that it feels like there's a missed opportunity to give them either regionals or additional forms. In particular, the 'dex mentions them having shells at one point, which would be perfect for some kind of regional:

(Oddly enough, PLA gives us a regional slug with a shell on its back... in the form of Goodra. Okay.)

But the other thing is that I would love to see them add North and South forms as well. I mean, why not? It fits with the 'dex entries for these guys:

And it could give them the opportunity to try out more vibrant colors. I'm fine with the line as is, but I've seen some people express a desire to see something as brilliant as a real nudibranch, which is understandable:

Giving them some additional forms would be a great way to play more with the colors and designs. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoy these slugs.

[ddarker-dreams]

FINALLY SOMEONE SAID THE TRUTH.

I admit that i enjoyed act 3 but it feels like really rushed i have so much complain with that.

The build up until act 2 was so good it give us so much premise but the final blow si meh. Sorry that i want to share thing long rant with you

1. Why the final talk is with yae, no offense to her but we need ei to explain not to mention she witness khaenriah downfall so she can give us more information, i feel like they do it for the plot armor so they can just keep dragging this

2. So many things that quite inconsistant, the shogun is show no mercy to anyone that even did a little thing outside what she think its right, how come she can still have a talk with signora, when sara is falling like that, and also there is no clarification about sara right now.

The traveler was so done at first they refuse to help thoma and ayaka at the beginning. But they seem so happy and forget everything how come they are not RAGE ( okay maybe this is to bias and personal) when this nation provide nothing about our siblings information and also why they are not mention anything about their problem in ei stroy quest. Its nonsense! She is right in front of youu, ask about your siblings, ask about khaenriah, ask about ukmown god!!. How come they can just forget like that. Also mihoyo really waste the potential about twin things i thing ei will give us so much help bcs of the sympathy that we both rn lost our twin but noooo.

3. Kokomi seem lost some brain cell, she make a very succesfull grand intro but she become meh in act 3, how come a great strategist like her let the sus sponsorship slip just bcs they are desperate, not to mention her screen time is really small and her role seem so unsignificant and it feels lile she is a plain npc.

4. The awesome world quest that we have done doesnt get any mention at all! Inazuma owe us so much with cleansing sakura, thunder sakura, tatarigami, obarashi quest. It has so much potential that yae or ei or anyone else aknowledge what traveler has been done but nooo.

cracks knuckles... i suppose it's time for my promised dissertation. interestingly enough, you touched on a lot of the main issues i had with chapter III.

i think that if i had to pin the main issue, it's a lack of overall cohesiveness? we were jumping all over the place without the chance to ever flesh things out. inazuma is a smaller cast, but i feel like we didn't get to see any of them shine. since i'm most interested in the genshin characters, i'll break down my problems by going over everyone and their (lack) of impact on the story.

was ayaka not questioned or placed under suspicion for being close to thoma before his escape? i wanted to see her broken up over her duties as they relate to the yashiro commission, paired with having someone she genuinely cares about in danger. it would've been an interesting struggle if she was forced to choose one or the other. instead she just kinda took a back seat.

speaking of thoma, i don't even have anything to say, because he just... was there? for .0001 seconds. said "lol this sucks ig" and that's about it. i know we're going to get a story for him in the future since he's a 5* but i'm not getting my hopes up 😭 then in the raiden shogun's character story, man is peachy keen! be upset with the raiden shogun! have some inner conflict! even if it's just using loaded language because he's under surveillance for going against the raiden shogun, that'd be so cool. saying something like,

"Traveler, what's with that expression? Oh please, there's nothing to worry about. We're under the Statue of the Omnipresent God's protection. Nothing bad has ever happened here." *wink*

i also don't know what to say about gorou. he was... there....... i think. what is he fighting for? what are the stakes for him? what makes him place so much trust into kokomi? i'm out of things to say about him because i don't remember anything he did or said.

kokomi... oh kokomi... i was so hyped. so excited. i thought that maybe we could see a foil to the raiden shogun. that she'd have a moment where she's forced to realize, just like her opponent, sacrifices must be made that will hurt people who will never understand why she made them. or maybe something to show her military prowess. but instead she just accepts a mysterious patron's help (?), sees her people aging like the grateful dead from JJBA, and goes oh well. that sucks. what can ya do. oh bye traveler i guess, good luck with that. ????????????? HUH... similar case to thoma where she's gonna get a character story but like. she won't be the leader of the resistance anymore. that was her whole shtick. they took her shtick away. also she forced me to interact with more NPCs whose names i've already forgotten so i'm tilted about that still.

KUJOU SARA... AN INJUSTICE. A DISGRACE. a slap to my woman loving face. the build up was there. yae miko's comments about sara probably knowing the tenryou commission is involved in shady dealings, but is choosing not to think about it. sara being forced to confront reality and challenge her adopted father with the truth. being able to blaze a new path for herself in the process. when she started running to the raiden shogun i was ultra hyped up. sara, a devotee to the shogun for so long, was about to see her god interacting with the same people who led inazuma to this awful state. how would she react? would she stay ignorant, like yae miko so coyly said, choosing to look away in favor of following her god's footsteps? or would she be forced to recognize the raiden shogun isn't as divine as she once thought, and challenge her belief system?

we open the door to see the raiden shogun. the loading screen ensues. the camera pans to the ominous room, clouded in darkness, hinting at the ominous confrontation that is to come. the music takes a serious timbre. and then...

well fuck that potential character arc i guess. (we still don't know what sara made of any of this since she poofed out of existence from the story at this point)

kazuha also was handed a similar treatment. we've been with him for a while longer now. he is our introduction into inazuma, the one who first gets us emotionally involved by regaling us with the bittersweet tale of friendship that led him to becoming a wanted criminal. a kind soul who loves nature yet was dealt a cruel hand by fate, forced to watch his home nation turn into a hostile place, where his dear friend ultimately perished as a result. we get the scene with his friend's vision lighting back up. he parries a block from the raiden shogun, in the same area where his friend was killed by her. the parallels. the drama. except this time, he wasn't too late. he protected the traveler where he "failed" to protect his friend in the past. did he feel redemption at this? or was it a bittersweet reminder of what could've been?

WELL i guess we'll never know because we didn't get to talk to him again 😭 idk who got a bait and switch worse, him or sara. jesus christ mihoyo.

then we have signora. why is the raiden shogun talking to her? does she know about the gnosis being taken, and if she doesn't, what was her plan to get it from the archon? what does she think about scaramouche? and oh, okay, we're fighting here now. good fight + god tier music. pog pog. okay, now we've beaten her up, and raiden shogun wyd— wait no not signora her lore is still on CUPS not YET raiden shogun and— ah she's dead. okay. non nerds who didn't read artifact lore are going to know nothing about her. signora has such an interesting story, and yet... well. ok.

then we get raiden shogun redemption (?) arc. i was hype for this as well, though at that point, idk why i bothered being hype. i knew they were gonna do a cute power of friendship something or another, and i'm good with that, so long as it's executed well. what i was envisioning was like seven different buffs to correspond with the seven different visions, the dreams of those whose ambitions were stolen serving as the spear to penetrate the raiden shogun's heart of stone. maybe a hydro vision giving us extra healing for a time, with the voice acting over it being like,

"Even if the rest of the world forgets us, let our will carry you through this one final time. Succeed where we couldn't, Traveler."

so on and so forth.

but instead we got— you get the idea at this point. why bother spelling it out anymore.

at that point i was surprised the raiden shogun didn't go "oopsie woopsie!! we made a fucky wucky!!!" because that was the vibe i was getting. i love ei, don't get me wrong, but i wanted to see her challenged with what she had done to inazuma in the past year. maybe meeting NPC #2345259 who lost her sister to the vision decree or something, reminding ei of the love she held for her sister... being forced to come to terms with the extent of what she's done in pursuit of eternity.

anyway. please for the love of god mihoyo hire better writers for the main story. that is all i ask. thank you.

[tobi-smp]

Sorry for sending this to you specifically but the thought of making my own post and being perceived terrifies me, and I also think you might have some interesting input on the matter?

How much do you think c!phil being the way he is, is a result of ""bad writing"" (I'd more call it inexperienced), and how much of it is him just being morally gray/not a good person/whatever you would call him at this point idk.

Because one one hand a lot of C!Phil to me feels like he's a prime example to some of the downsides of (mostly) improv role play. He only exists when he is being played and all the knowledge on him kept by the one playing him is only in his head. None of him is written down anywhere so he acts inconsistent and details are easily forgotten/reconnected. Its hard to figure out what c!Phil wants to say because it comes off as not even he knows what he wants — and not because of him, but what the writers want to do. There's no thought behind his actions, just an outside force dictating what he should do for plot or what would be funny in the moment.

I often wonder how different c!phil would be if he were kept track of like a dnd character, but tbh you could say that about anyone.

(personally I don't think this is a bad thing and the DSMP should be given leeway due to its nature as an unscripted roleplay, but I think it can lead to a lot of characters like c!phil)

But I feel all these things could also just be who c!Phil is. Is he an inconsistent person because he only parrots his ideals and doesn't truly believe them? Maybe he's so old and jaded he's forgotten where he's been and can't empathize with people suffering in ways he was able to overcome long ago. Maybe C!Phil is meant to be one side of the coin of attachment. He values people while C!Tommy (in his mind) over values things, seeing his views separate from C!Tommy's when in reality, they're two sides of the same coin, the thing C!Dream has been trying to distance himself from.

I There's so many cool and interesting angles you can infer from Phil's character depending who he interacts with and how — but none of it feels intentional. Is that just me? Is c!phil simply a product of how he's been handled by the story? Or is he just. Like That.

honestly, it's difficult to say what about a character is intentional or not.

I will say, phil's character has suffered the most over inconsistencies in the writing that aren't necessarily His Fault. the sbi dynamic was Fully Canon once, and then he was in character limbo for a long while after it wasn't.

someone like foolish was able to come in completely disconnected from anyone else on the server and then Built those connections thoughtfully, while phil was left scrambling trying to figure out What his connections to other characters were to try to build on shaky foundations that might move again.

we can say for Sure phil went through an awkward period where he was trying to figure out where his stance was supposed to be with other characters and where he had to be careful about what he said about his past while trying to establish his character, which was limiting considering just how interpersonal his central story arc is.

but at the same time, there are aspects to improv roleplay where the separation between the two doesn't matter as long as it's recognized as having happened. watching his scene between him and wilbur on the 16th its easy to see that phil was out of his depth. it was his first moments on the server and he was immediately dumped into the deep end of the pool. he was laughing, he was starting and stopping sentences without knowing where to go with them, and wilbur was so much Surer and Stronger in his delivery. which ultimately funneled phil's actions into giving wilbur what he wanted, in killing his son.

obviously we understand from an out of world perspective that this was due in no small part to phil's inexperience with roleplay, but this translates directly into phil's In Character Reaction as well. c!phil hasn't seen his son in years, he doesn't know what's going on, he didn't know how to help his son. stumbling, not knowing what to do in the face of wilbur's Absolute Certainty. it makes sense even if his choice was a Terrible one.

think about how dream's fixation on tommy in the early days was down to them both being active content creators that bounced well off of each other and how those interactions have permanently been tinted by current lore. the intentions behind what a character does and says matters less than what it tells us about that character, you know?

that said, while I Do think phil's character has suffered the most from retcons and shuffling behind the scenes, I Do genuinely think that things like his hypocrisy, stubbornness, and ignorance are written to be there Intentionally. whether that was his intent the entire time or he connected the dots himself later matters Less than what he does with it now.

either way, I think people are angry at c!phil right now because cc!phil wanted them to be. and I'm optimistic about his character moving forward.

[filipinoizukuu]

Pls share about the Gospel of Judas 👀

, im SO glad someone asked because this topic is nigh always pingponging around in my head and the fact i get to ramble about it means the WORLD to me. TW ahead for canon-typical violence, gore, and other such discussions of all that fun heretical stuff!

 Now, to preface this, I just wanted to say that I’m not a licensed professional in anything related to theology nor religion nor historical artifacts. I am. as we all are deep down inside, a simple teenager with ridiculous hyper-fixations and a vast ocean of random information that will not be of any importance to my career or home life whatsoever. Easily, many of the things I talk about could either be wrong or debunked, but I will try my best to explain the Book of Judas as I understood it.

Among the many books that make up what we know as the Bible today, there were various seemingly ‘missing perspectives’ and inconsistencies that existed between gospels. One of the reasons for this was the fact that the Bible in and of itself was a compiled work that was originally recorded years after the oral tradition had passed. What is or isn’t ‘canon’ often depended on the rulings of past Popes who worked with historians to determine the authenticity of ancient artifacts that either proved or contested the canonical teachings of the Bible--one of the more popular debunked samples being The Shroud of Turin, which while being ruled as a fake by Pope Clement the VII a long time ago, still has its authenticity being debated until today.

It’s important to remember that the canon status of ancient artifacts. while somewhat reliant on Papal confirmation, can sometimes be contested and interpreted to each individual’s discretion.

And among all of these artifacts, there is my favorite one of all--The Book of Judas. Now, factually speaking, the Gospel of Judas was written in (somewhere between 2 to) 5 A.D., not actually that farfetched considering that only in 1 A.D. was the first version of the Bible we know today written. It was found somewhere in Ancient Egypt but was declared as fiction at some point in 180 A.D. by St. Iranaeus of Lyon. To understand the impact that The Book of Judas would have on the Bible (which, to put it simply, was revolutionary), you’d first have to have a quick review and understanding of who Judas Iscariot was in the gospels that we know today. 

Judas was a disciple.

He was one of the 12 disciples that were closest to Jesus and a disciple that most accounts of the story would say actually truly deeply loved him at some point. Judas was, as all memes about Christianity are fond of reminding, also the traitor that eventually chose money and greed over his love for God’s son and turned him in with a kiss in a garden that led to Jesus Christ’s death at the cross.

That is until you read the translations of the Book of Judas.

In the original books--whether it was because he was possessed by the Devil or simply a man who had fallen into greed--Judas was portrayed to be a sinner and a horrible traitor. After his betrayal and Jesus’ eventual death, Judas had then become guilt-ridden and anguished, choosing to end his own life in the Gospel of Matthew and even tarnishing a field with his blood and sins according to St. Luke in Acts. 

The Book of Judas, however, CHALLENGES these motives. Instead, it takes what brought all past Christian texts together by changing the portrayal of Judas on its head and putting the previous ‘traitor’ under the light of something else entirely.

According to the Book of Judas, Jesus had asked Judas to betray him.

The 26-page manuscript was a brief retelling of the dynamics we were lead to believe in the story told by the main four books. In the Book of Judas, we were told that the original other 12 disciples were actually quite... foolish. They were described to be sort of arrogant and clueless, constantly misinterpreting and forgetting Jesus’ words because while he was teaching them to be better and to spread the words of God, the disciples were still, at their core, human sinners. The manuscript was believed to have reported that of the disciples that were closest, or at least best tolerated by Jesus--Judas was by far the most understanding of His words.

Judas, in accordance with his book, was the only one who could understand the significance and cryptic lessons behind Jesus’ teachings. Because of this, Jesus knew he was the only capable one to serve him in what was to come.

You see, part of the prophecy was that Jesus had to die. He had to suffer and fall for humanity’s sake so that we would be able to be forgiven. As much as it sucks to even think about it, Jesus had come to expect that someone would need to cause his death and hurt him all so that he could fulfill his purpose.

In the end, he thought that death by the hand of an enemy was far worse than a death at the hands of a friend.

During the Last Supper, Jesus approached Judas and placed him into a vision. He placed Judas in a fantastical, wonderful dream where Judas sat facing the house of heaven and saw Jesus. Jesus, who looked at his beloved friend and said: “you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” Judas will exceed all of them. And he will sacrifice the man that clothed Jesus.

In this interpretation, Judas was essentially told that he was the one who would finally free Jesus from his physical form. Judas, the supposed traitor disciple, would be the one to fulfill Jesus’ prophecy and thus sacrificed his beloved friend to bring about forgiveness for humanity.

And he understands.

In this manuscript, Judas Iscariot understands the will of God and what he has to do. He understands the weight of his betrayal and what he has to do in order to obey Jesus--so then it isn’t money or fear or anger or evil that motivates him to surrender Jesus to the soldiers but utter obedience and adoration for the Son of God. Judas gives his ‘yes’, knowing that for years and years he will be slandered and labeled as a traitor but at his core, Judas knows that it was not a betrayal to begin with.

So he led the soldiers to Jesus in the garden. He kissed him and let him be taken away and let him die.

-

This was the official translation approved by BBC and National Geographic according to the original translations done by Stephen Emmel, a Coptic studies professional.

Later on, this interpretation would be challenged by Dr. April DeConick, who claims that the mistreatment and mistranslation of the paper actually told the complete opposite, in the way that the revelation in the Last Supper was not created by Jesus but, in fact, by Judas, who had revealed himself to be the 13th demon of hell. This interpretation, while less popular, served as a direct challenge to the recharacterization BBC and NatGeo had approved of. I don’t really know too much about this debate, but I do know that this second interpretation does exist.

Of course, the original Judas text itself is currently impossible to truly translate to be sure. It was torn and shuffled, put into a freezer, and possibly even missing a few pages (which you can blame Bruce Ferinni for), ultimately making the authentic manuscript really difficult to properly restore.

The takeaway from this whole Book though--whether you accept it as canon or not--is that there were many interpretations and beliefs early Christians and Gnostics had that the time that criticized the way the four main gospels had passed down God’s teachings. People believed what they thought supported their own beliefs and at the end of the day. it's all still just a matter of who we choose to credit.

The real author to the Book of Judas remains anonymous to this day, but I am very glad to have been able to share this with you all :) 

not proofread since i did this at like 4 am    |    x   x   x

[septiembrre]

I'm a little late but I just saw your post from a year ago about latinx rep in good girls and its sad reflecting back on it and how the show could've done better. Rio was just another stereotype, I hate how he was ambitiously latino and there was just no connection to his culture. Was he first, 2nd, or 3rd Gen? If he was 1st Gen it didn't make sense to have the family speak English. One thing that always annoyed me is how OOC he was at times and how the writers purposely made him out to be like some brown aggressive misogynistic man. They didn't bother making him complex. In a way I'm glad the show got canceled. As a Mexican woman the way Rio was written was racist.

Wah, I’ve been sitting on answering your ask. I wanted to tease your ask apart and respond to it sentence by sentence. But... my brain kept rechazandolo, so now I have feelings dump instead.

Since Good Girls ended, I have been parsing through how I feel about S4 and GG overall — sometimes more positively, sometimes more negatively. Then, I flip to reminding myself it’s not that serious (it's just tv! this is supposed to be my leisure activity!). Then, I waffle back to reflecting.

So, no textual analysis just feels and whining under the cut. I know folks are still mourning the end of the show and I don't want to yuck anyone's yum. Tagging with #ggnegativity.

My short answer is that Good Girls is my beloved, sometimes joyful, sometimes hurtful, complicated little show. Even now that we’re no longer getting new episodes I’m wary of sifting through the information we have about Rio because it’s a mess and it seems like a lot of his character was poorly thought out (ahem, all those dumb messages from Bill Krebs confirming multiple instances of lack of intentionality or care!).

I say this because I was tempted to start responding to you by riffing off of your comment with, “y'know, now that you say that, I think he’s third or fourth gen…”, pero who cares? And the point was never specifically about what gen he is, or even more specifically about... lol, I was going to say it doesn't matter what nationality he was, they just needed to pick one. Ugh, but the wording of that is too glib. The lack of intentionality behind these details feels sanitized to me, it feels very white gaze, it feels lazy.

However, I could have forgiven a lot of this weak character construction if his baseline, plot-related characterization on-screen was more consistent. But, Rio was often used as a plot device in a way that often fell flat for me, a weekly recurring bogeyman whether his antagonism made sense or not. On one hand, I feel for the creative team, because I think they were in a hard place, trying to avoid romanticizing Rio, and trying to seemingly backtrack the sexualization of him in Season 2, but... Idk, it's complicated.

Retrospectively, it’s sitting with me how much Good Girls is rooted in whiteness. While it's something I discerned before (lol, most obviously with 2x13 and in S3 with Lucy's disposability), you know how some shows get to their third or fourth season and finally start investing in their marginalized characters? It’s a crappy thing to hold out hope for, they're crumbs! But, I was. And we did get some Rio worldbuilding. But, ultimately, it felt weak to me -- under-conceptualized or under-worked.

For example, I liked Nick as a Bigger Bad who drove Rio and Beth together. I also thought that Nick's non-existent moral code was a lovely foil to Rio's, and that this contrast humanized Rio in a way that he needed. It also cast a new light on Rio's behavior of the earlier seasons, outside of Beth's perception in a way that I thought was healthy and needed. Great, meaty stuff! However, Nick and Rio's relationship came across as shallow to me. There really did not seem to be a lived-in quality to their scenes. The show really struggled with that element overall -- even with the three lead protagonists (their decades-long history with each other and interactions between their families being largely absent). I wonder why they made that choice.

It's strange because on the flip side we got a hefty amount of contextualization for MLM guy Vance and Annie's bf Kevin... Even that cop who Mick killed! All white men, too.

Me da pena.

Or maybe the thing that bothers me is that those scenes between Nick and Rio didn't center Rio's perspective effectively? Despite the one-on-one scenes being outside of Beth's framing (Rio being a secondary character typically tethered to Beth's story arc), there still was a lot of distance between Rio and the viewer? Like I think of Vance in his kitchen with his wife and child, and the way we as viewers were brought into that to empathize with him, and I think of the distance of Nick+Rio boxing scene or the scenes at the bar. Argh! It's hard to pinpoint without the textual analysis I feel too grumpy to do. It was such a narrative choice to keep Rio aloof and I side-eye it.

Anyway --

Overall, the writing room/show creators/decision-makers didn't seem to consider Latine/x/a/o viewers throughout the crafting of Good Girls and that sucks. It really feels like I'm being told to conform to the white gaze in watching the show, and after 2x13 that makes me feel prickly and defensive. A part of me yearns to do a rewatch to map Rio’s character (and inconsistencies) but I still yield joy from Good Girls — it’s been my main comfort story during the pandemic. I also rendered joy from Season 4 specifically — some of those scenes between the leads at the end were phenom!!

I am leaning into what's bringing me joy right now, so I feel hesitant to stew in critique, even while I also feel some sort of need to make sense of the hurtful racializations. I have a compulsion to write them all down on the same post or list -- somewhere where I can see them all at once and understand. But, at the moment, it’s not a use of my time and energy that feels good. Opting into fics and writing is bringing me a lot of joy during hard times.

I have to close with one final whine, that I am SO fatigued with television options right now. I find myself desperately wishing for more TV out there whose priority audience isn't only white folks. Good Girls isn't alone in its treatment of Latinx characters, or alone in mishandling characters of color or gay characters, or prioritization of empathy for white het male characters, but certainly, creating something more thoughtful shouldn't be so hard.

[missnight0wl]

Since the topic of Ismelda came up and no one ever talks about her 🙈😅 I feel like JC doesn't know what to do with her (?). Like they didn't know what to do with Tulip so she appeared less and less, only like a cameo, there was the Cook Off but that tlsq came and went, and she was the least memorable character in there.

But Ismelda is weird cause they seem like they want to include her but don't know how? They can't decide whether she's getting nicer or is still the same old Ismelda. If she's over Barnaby or not. If she's Merula's friend or not.

One of the SQ that most gives me this feeling is The Quibbler - that no one talks about it ever, but I loved that tlsq - in which we see her doing something half understandable (a werewolf in school is dangerous and Dumbledore is an idiot), half unacceptable (especially because it's Chiara we're talking about).

But the thing is, we see her hanging out with a different pair of kids every scene like little henchmen, which is already unlike her, but also several of them were Gryffindors, and it's so OoC.

And I also didn't entirely understand her purpose here. Was it for the money? The pleasure of screwing over Dumbledore? Screwing over the werewolf? It was a really bad thing she almost did and I don't get how JC wants us to view her, because then we get her really friendly in other tlsqs of the same year, which returns with my theory of they're confused about what to do with her.

(Sorry this is stupidly long).

No worries about it being long! In return, you’re getting a pretty long answer. Apologies in advance because I’m gonna be very critical about “The Quibbler” TLSQ as it’s one of my least favourite quests, and I believe that Ismelda is not even its biggest problem.

But first things first. It’s probably just my nit-picking, but I still want to talk about it. I wouldn’t really compare the situations between Tulip and Ismelda. I believe that the main reason why Tulip was moved to the side is her strong connection to the main story. It was revealed by Matt London that her wand is a hand-me-down from her grandmother who attended Mahoutokoro, her parents work at the Ministry (where R might have bigger or smaller influence), there was the whole thing with her friendship with Merula, and Matt London just seemed to be fond of her in general. The problem is that Jam City got lost with their main story at some point. I believe that some of the elements I mentioned about Tulip might still be important, but I think that the problem is not necessarily that Jam City doesn’t know what to do with Tulip – they don’t know what to do with the main story. And Tulip suffers because of that.

I mean, look at Tulip in Y4. She had her whole investigation on Rakepick and the Cursed Vault which led her from House-Elves to Hogsmeade. Then, it was just dropped like a hot potato. Sure, there might be an in-game explanation for that: she was silenced by Rakepick. I mean, there’s no way Patricia didn’t learn about her investigation, and if she was discovering things faster than MC was supposed to, then Rakepick might’ve done something with it. It’s more likely, though, that JC started getting confused with the main story. Too bad that all notes they have on Tulip when it comes to future plans are about that. Anyway, the end result is kind of the same: that they don’t know what to do with Tulip. But as I said, I’m nit-picking.

Now, the situation with Ismelda is very different, in my opinion, because I don’t think she has much direct connection to the main story at all. What I mean by that is that she’s not really interested in the Cursed Vaults, for example. I believe that she joined Merula mainly because she wanted to belong. I don’t know, she just never really showed that she might care about the treasure or even the search itself. Because of that, the writers could work on her just as a character: someone who’s not exactly MC’s friend, but also is not as antagonistic as Merula. And that’s good! But ultimately, I suppose that Ismelda became a victim of the major change in the writing team by the end of Y5.

I talked about it a bit in my analysis on how MC was supposed to use Crucio on Rakepick, perhaps you recall. Either way, I strongly believe that there was some big change around that time. It even can be seen in our recent discussion about Rowan and Barnaby: how the writers seemingly don’t remember that Rowan tutored Barnaby for years etc. And I suppose it’s just the same with Ismelda. Notice how at the beginning of Y6, MC doesn’t remember at all that Ismelda is not that bad. We also totally abandoned the conflict between Ismelda and Merula. It’s not exactly that they grew apart because in Y6Ch13, there’s a scene where we learn that Ismelda still spies for Merula, for example. On the other hand, Merula hangs out with Ben suspiciously often – and Ismelda seemingly doesn’t have any reaction to that. Their relationship is still weird like that in Y7, actually. But what happened with Ismelda’s jealousy from Y5?

Now, the thing with her crush on Barnaby actually seems pretty realistic to me personally. I mean, as someone who used to have a big crush on their friend, I have to say – it’s not that easy to simply say: “Oh, I’m over with that!”, but also you want to be over with that, so it just ends up being very confusing. Of course, it could be as well the case of inconsistent writing, too, but that one thing doesn’t bother me much.

Moving to “The Quibbler” TLSQ, though… I don’t want to sound dismissive or anything, but I honestly don’t think there’s any point in trying to understand Ismelda’s motivation there or what the writers wanted us to think – and that’s simply because I doubt that its creator put much thought into it at all, to begin with. And the most problematic part of it is actually Chiara.

First of all, Chiara was super OoC in this quest. We know from the main story that she likes Divination very much, she’s very serious about it, she even believes Trelawney is a real Seer. There are even parts in Divination classes where she enjoys reading The Quibbler. But here, she suddenly laughs at the magazine? Why? Her strong scepticism makes absolutely no sense! Sure, you could argue that this story change her perspective on Divination and all of that, but the problem is that there’s no such conclusion in this quest. At any point, Chiara didn’t say: “Perhaps I shouldn’t make fun of The Quibbler after all” or anything like that. So, I’m sorry, but I just can’t accept this explanation.

Secondly, Chiara wanted to win money for the ingredients for Wolfsbane Potion, right? And we even had this scene:

But then, as soon as Chiara gets money, she’s all happy that she’ll be able to get ingredients in time. So… Chiara needed only money to get ingredients? So, the quest basically implies that DUMBLEDORE DIDN’T WANT TO GIVE CHIARA MONEY FOR INGREDIENTS? I mean, if Chiara needed only money to be sure that she’ll make it in time, what exactly was stopping Dumbledore from getting the ingredients from the same source?

I’m sorry, but it’s so bullshit. You can say a lot about Dumbledore, but he wouldn’t refuse to give Chiara money in a situation like that. You also can’t tell me that he didn’t have money. And even if you want to believe that Albus would be a scumbag like that, we saw in the “Lone Wolf” TLSQ that Snape cares about Chiara a lot, so he would give her money. Hell, Snape would buy the ingredients himself, brew the Potion and deliver it to Chiara.

The way I see it, someone really wanted to put Chiara in this quest for some reason, but they knew it doesn’t exactly make sense – so they needed a scapegoat. Sadly, Ismelda was the easiest to turn into a bad guy of the story. Honestly, I don’t think that the writer of this quest was thinking anything about how we’re gonna view Ismelda. They just needed to distract the players. I hate to say it, but it’s kind of an equivalent of Merula’s sad backstory. Just in this case, it was rather: “Let’s not care about writing a logical side quest. Let’s make everyone worried about precious cinnamon roll Chiara instead”.

I’m sorry if these statements sound a bit too strong, but I’m really annoyed thinking about how many people were hating on Ismelda after this quest while I didn’t see much on how little sense this story made in general. And truth be told, this whole situation kind of made me dislike Chiara…

Overall, I hope that “The Quibbler” TLSQ was an exception when it comes to Ismelda’s character. I assume that her role will still be somewhere between [MC’s friend] and [Merula]. I mean, I believe that that’s how she is usually (“The Quibbler” TLSQ aside). That being said, I also expect that Jam City is not gonna remember all of the past stories, so I suppose that Ismelda will never be truly consistent.

I have no idea if I addressed your concerns properly. I hope I did. If not, as always, feel free to ask for clarification.

[5ro4]

Dark makes no sense [Spoilers of the whole show]

I thought Netflix’s Dark season 3 was disappointing, boring and made no sense. From its first few chapters I was wishing for it to end already, but it kept going, simultaneously being a convoluted exposition dump while actually explaining nothing, then pulling an ending out of nowhere long after I had stopped caring.

It’s kinda hard to find proper criticism for the series last season; most people just praise how it’s the best possible ending and everything makes perfect sense, so I decided to write my thoughts and criticism.

I’ll clarify that I enjoyed seasons 1 and 2 a lot. They are convoluted in a good and interesting way, where everything seems to fit nicely together, to have been properly planned all along, and it carries the promise that the deeper mysteries that remain will be explained later on.

But then season 3 happens. I still think overall it’s a good show, interesting and worth watching, but season 3 is disappointing and the show as a whole is certainly no “perfectly written masterpiece”.

Massive spoilers from now on.

Even if it made logical sense, season 3 is bad.

Most of the charm of the first 2 seasons is watching how every action fits in a single linear timeline and how every cause had an unexpected consequence that makes the timeline more and more complex while maintaining perfect coherence. It’s hard to follow, but it’s doable.

Then season 3 ruins the charm by making everything so convoluted it’s impossible to follow and unsatisfactory to even try.

Complexity is enjoyable up to the point where anything can happen. Why would you still care then? How could you? A mystery is intriguing because it needs to be explained by the rules of the world; the rules you know and are able to follow. If the explanation could be “a witch did it”, then none of the mysteries would be intriguing.

So we have a character that dies, and it’s intriguing because we know he’s alive in the future, so how can this be possible? Well, there’s actually 2 parallel worlds, so he’s alive in the other world. It’s a surprising twist, but the rules have been broken; now almost every mystery can be explained by the existence of a parallel world.

But then a character dies in both worlds! How can that be? Well, in the second world there’s actually two intertwined timelines, so they died in one of them but no the other.

How are you supposed to care about anything that happens from this point onward? No mystery is that mysterious when the possibility of a convoluted explanation involving multiple worlds and timelines is always there. And why even bother trying to make sense of it when they could pull out a fourth timeline or a third parallel world at any moment (and they actually do)?

Character’s motivations are impossible to follow because everyone is lying and being double-crossed by alternate reality characters all the time.

Half of the characters you are following now aren’t even the original characters but their versions from another world or another timeline inside that second world, so it’s really difficult to keep caring about any of them.

I’m not even going to attempt to criticize any of the fine details or possible loose ends because when characters can jump between timelines and realities at any time and all of them are either lying or being lied to, I’m pretty sure that by watching the show 3 times and reading the wiki you could find some plausible explanation for any small inconsistency, but at this level of complexity who even cares.

However, I think there are major, big picture flaws that somehow seem to have gone over most people’s head.

1.- The end is the beginning, therefore every action is an explanation for itself.

Most of the plot and almost the entirety of season 3 could be summed up as: A ton of people do nonsensical things because they know their future selves did those things, so they must repeat them because time is linear (except in the end it isn’t).

The bootstrap paradox is the cheap way this show has to explain any mystery and any character motivation: It happened the first time, so it must happen the second one too. Since this is a loop with no beginning, there is no need for any action to have had a logical explanation at one point.

It becomes useless to try to understand why any of the main mysterious characters do anything or what their plan is, because it can always be explained (and often does) as just “this is what happened the first time, so it must happen the second one too”.

There’s a point where one character is compelled to kill himself just because a character from the future saw him kill himself, so he must kill himself now so the future is consistent, even though there was never an actual reason for him to kill himself.

This is cheap and lazy because you can have any character doing any mysterious thing and no explanation is needed. Why do Noah and Helge drop dead kids at specific times and locations? Because they are just repeating what their future selves did, and since the loop has no beginning, no original reason exists.

2.- Adam, Eve and Claudia’s plans and motivations make no sense.

Adam and Eve’s motivations, and to some extent Claudia’s, are extremely unclear. They are the ones who explain to everyone else how time and parallel worlds work, except they are always lying and opposing their younger selves, and they are actually wrong about how all of it works.

This makes it hard to actually know what their actual motivations are, since the show doesn’t clearly show when and how they arrived at their current understanding of the world. It’s somewhat clear what they are trying to do, but not why they are trying to do so or what makes them so confident about their knowledge.

The show presents Adam and Eva as opposing forces trying to control time, while Claudia helps one or the other at different times for different reasons, yet most of the time all of them are actually doing exactly the same thing: Trying to make everything happen as it happened the last time.

So the story goes something like this: Following Adam’s instructions, Young Jonas tries to change the past by preventing himself from being born. Claudia stops him, tells him he must fight against Adam and therefore he can’t stop existing, so he must let history repeat itself. Jonas works alongside Claudia and somehow eventually ends up becoming Adam, whose plan, according to the Dark Wiki (dark-netflix.fandom.com) is to keep the cycle going.

This makes no sense, but that last part is actually wrong, at least to some extent, which shows that even the people writing the wiki don’t really know Adam’s motivations.

By the end of the show, it’s clear what is the ultimate thing each of them are trying to accomplish: Adam wants to destroy both worlds, Eve wants to keep the cycle going to avoid Adam destroying the worlds, and Claudia wants to save her daughter in at least one world. None of them seems to actually care about the apocalypse, although that was supposed to be the main conflict to avoid.

But how did Adam and Eve reach those conclusions? That’s never properly explained and their whole development seems nonsensical and contradictory: They try to change the past as their younger selves, they grow old trying and realize it’s impossible, so they turn around and try to prevent their younger selves from changing it.

At every chance they had to actually change the past someone appeared to stop them or convinced them not to do it, yet they somehow end up with the belief that time cannot be changed, while simultaneously doing their best effort to ensure time is not changed.

This is a total contradiction. Either you think time can be changed and try to do so, or you think time can’t be changed and do nothing about people trying, since you don’t need to prevent anyone from doing what you believe to be impossible.

Adam’s plan is to kill Martha and her baby, since her son is who ultimately will put the whole cycle in motion. If he is successful, he will create a paradox where the cycle was never put in motion therefore none of them exist, and thus they will cease to exist*. To do so, he needs to make pregnant-Martha go through a time travel portal because quantum shenanigans say that’s the only way to remove her baby from existence.

* “A paradox happens therefore we suddenly stop existing” makes no logical sense, but since it’s a common trope, let’s ignore it for now.

Eva knows of Adam’s plan and disagrees. For some not properly explained reason, she would rather have and infinite loop of people repeating their same miserable lives rather than ending the loop and making them disappear,  thinking this is equal to them never existing, although they clearly existed. There might also be motherly instincts mixed in; the love for the son she is never shown having a conversation with before turning him into a murder machine to prevent him from not existing.

Eva’s plan is pretty stupid and evil, while Adam’s plan is contradictory, since he is preventing people from changing the past or creating a paradox in order for him to create a particular paradox as a last resource after failing to change the past.

Meanwhile Claudia is trying to repeat the timeline with the intention of actually changing everything at some point, but I don’t care to try and guess what her plan actually was all along.

3.- There’s no way Claudia could get her final revelation.

The characters are supposedly repeating the same cycle over and over, so nothing should actually change, but let’s say it can somehow because they explain something about moving grains of sand.

Concluding that a third world must exist because “there’s always a third dimension” is already a wild logical jump, but even so, how could she ever conclude that the third world was an original one that got destroyed and divided into two parallel realities, and that the reason was the clockmaker failed to make a time machine? It is completely impossible for her to conclude such things.

4.- The creation of the two worlds makes no sense.

So, there was an original world. A clockmaster tries to make a time machine, but instead destroys his world creating… two parallel worlds with 3 timelines that are interconnected in an extremely convoluted loop without beginning? And neither of those worlds actually spawns from the moment he activates the time machine, since he is intercepted years before that by those world’s time travelers?

This is a total cop-out that’s not a better explanation than “magic”. A dude made a machine that destroyed the world and spawned 3 seasons of a completely arbitrary but conveniently interconnected mystery thriller.

5.- Time rules are inconsistent

There’s a scene in which time is proven to be so deterministic that Jonas is literally immortal. He can't be killed because that’s not the place and time where he’s supposed to die in. This is both dumb and inconsistent.

The concept makes sense to a certain extent: If the character is alive in the future, it means he didn’t die in the past. However, that only works as long as the character is not trying to kill himself to prove a point. It only works somewhat elegantly in the show because Jonas accepts it as truth and doesn’t try to push it further, but what if he didn’t? What if he kept trying to kill himself just because he knows he can’t? Would knives break and guns keep getting jammed? It’s dumb because it implies time is a sentient being that will go out of its way to prevent things that aren’t supposed to happen from happening.

Also, it’s inconsistent because it’s latter confirmed that the past can in fact be changed.

6.- Conflicting beliefs are held at the same time.

Eva devotes her life to ensure everything happens as it should happen while simultaneously being 100% sure things will happen in the present as they happened in the future and there’s no way to avoid that. She is dumbfounded when Adam doesn’t kill her the moment he was supposed to kill her.

I’m pretty sure Adam and Claudia hold these same contradicting beliefs at one point or another, simultaneously believing the past can’t change while making their best effort to ensure it doesn’t change.

7.- Time stopped for a brief moment.

Claudia literally says that time stopped for a brief moment when the clockmaster activated his time machine or something.

Think about that. She’s telling you that time stopped during a small  period of time. She's using time to mesure the lack of time.

Also, how could she ever know if time was stopped and for how long (hah), and how does it make any sense that her plan is to do something while time is stopped.

8.- Deep meaningful answers for the gullible.

This is not a plot hole, just a criticism to the writing and the development of the plot: Almost every time a character makes a crucial question to the character that holds the answer, they either don’t respond because of the bootstrap paradox (“my future self didn’t explain it to you so now that I’m in the same situation I won’t explain it either to avoid changing the past”) or they quote a philosopher or something in an attempt to seem deep while giving a non-answer that’s completely unrelated to the current conversation.

This is an actual conversation from the show:

- Why are you storing barrels full of nuclear waste inside an underground cave? - What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.

OK! No more questions then!

9.- Blind trust in the wrong person.

This is also a relatively minor nitpick I just want to get off my chest.

Characters, particularly Jonas and Martha, blindly trust anyone who appears before them and tell them they have been lied to, even after discovering that the last three people who supposedly revealed the truth to them was actually lying too.

This could still be believable given the circumstances until we get to the point when they would rather trust a total stranger over their future selves. Why would you trust anyone over your future self? Even if they are lying, you will become them in the future; their plan will be your plan, no matter how hard is it to understand now. Yet Jonas doesn’t require any proof from Claudia before trusting her completely over Adam.

10.- Why are Jonas and Martha needed to stop the cycle?

This is never actually explained beyond some vague idea of them being at the center of everything. Claudia could have traveled to the original world herself. Jonas could have done it too without taking Martha with him.

How do they even tune the machine to take them to a world that no longer exists?

11.- The whole time tunnel with Jonas and Martha?

???

12.- The resolution is a paradox, and thus impossible.

In order to stop time travel from ever existing they need to travel in time and prevent time travel from being created, thus making their existence a paradox, which makes them slowly disappear in a cloud of gold dust.

I know this was done for the visual spectacle, but still.

So much struggle against determinism, so many exposition dumps, so much care to make every piece fit perfectly in the timeline, just for the final resolution to be a blatant paradox. Pretty, but not really fitting.

Even though multiple universes with multiple timelines are shown to exist, somehow the rules of time only allow for a single timeline to exist in the end, even if that timeline contains an impossible paradox.

[radramblog]

On the origins of Shiny Pokémon

Shiny Pokémon are a quirk of the franchise that has blossomed into a huge part of the Pokémon fandom, to the point where content creators (streamers, mostly) have built careers on spending hours and hours hunting for them.

Considering the humble origins of the concept, it’s kind of a surprise how we got here, frankly.

Shiny Pokémon were introduced in the series' second generation, in Gold and Silver. These were the first games in the series to be in colour, basic as the palettes were, and the developers thought that having variations in a species’ colour, kind of like albinism, would be an interesting idea to use this new technology. At least, I assume that’s what happened, I obviously wasn’t there. There wasn’t originally an official term for Shinies, though “Alternate colour” or “rare” were in some of the earlier games- the first official use of “Shiny” was in a promotional TCG card in 2009. Interestingly, Gold and Silver (but not Crystal) were actually playable on an original Game Boy, albeit in greyscale, which is why the twinkle animation and sound effect that gives the phenomenon its name were added in the first place.

The addition of the Red Gyarados plotline was kind of a genius way of introducing the concept to the player and fanbase. After all, the phenomena are typically extremely rare at 1/8192 per Pokémon encounter, and I believe only one very missable NPC alludes to them in the entire game. It’s quite possible that without all the fuss about the Red Gyarados and the Lake of Rage plot in general, Shinies would have been the subject of the same schoolyard rumours that surrounded the early generations, like “Pikablu” (Marill leaking before its official introduction) or the Pokegods.

I know I didn’t know what a Shiny was when I first encountered one. Sure didn’t catch it either, though I know I was trying to. It was a Ponyta, in Fire Red, and it was on the path up to Mt. Ember who’s name I’ve forgotten. I definitely spent a long time running around after accidentally KO’ing it in order to find this “Blue flame Ponyta” again, to no luck.

The introduction of shinies in Gen II led to some interesting quirks in their original iteration, considering the jank of early gen Pokémon. Shininess, like many other things that generation, were determined by IVs, a calculation that would later be replaced by an individualized “personality value” for each Pokémon. A Gen II (or Gen I, if trading is used) Pokémon will be Shiny if its IVs are all 10 except for Attack (2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, or 15) and HP (which is calculated from the remainder), which ironically means the aesthetic bonus that’s not supposed to have an in-game function actually is a result of largely above-average stats. This calculation comes with a few other quirks resulting from other things attached to IV calculations- they can only have a Hidden Power of Grass or Dragon with 49 or 69 power, any species that has a 7:1 male:female ratio such as the starters or Eevee cannot produce a female shiny (Gender is determined by Attack IV, and those species only are female with a 0 or 1 Attack), and, perhaps ironically, only the I and V Unown variants can be Shiny.

That’s a lot of bullshit trivia, isn’t it!

Both in and out of the actual games, it would be a while before Shinies were properly recognized and further integrated into the canon of Pokémon. A few TCG cards featured them, along with a rule in which you could only have one in your deck- I’m not sure how powerful they actually were, but the rarity was at least accurately represented. A handful of trainers in Firered/Leafgreen’s Trainer Tower have them by default, the first (and, I think, only? (nope just checked there’s one guy in Gen VII)) NPC trainers guaranteed to have a Shiny in the games. As well, the Celebi event in Heartgold/Soulsilver would feature a Shiny Pichu, the first guaranteed Shiny since the original Gold/Silver (it also has the Red Gyarados, being a remake), and that generation would feature the series’s first method of increasing the encounter rate with the Poké Radar (as well as the Masuda breeding method), but beyond this, the odds were still and always 1/8192.

It wasn’t until Generation V and Black and White that more effort was taken in the games to acknowledge Shiny Pokémon. This was the first time that the term was actually used inside the game, for one, and Shiny Hunters were given their first real tool in the Shiny Charm- a passive item available by completing the entire Pokédex that effectively triples the encounter rate and stacks with the aforementioned Masuda method (which was also slightly buffed).

This came at a cost, however- the Shiny Lock mechanic. This is an inbuilt feature in the encounter code that prevents certain species of Pokémon from ever generating as Shiny- in this game, that applies to Reshiram and Zekrom, the games’ cover legendaries, as well as the Mythical event Pokémon Victini and anything obtained through the Dream World feature. Shiny sprites for these species still existed in the game, effectively as failsafes, but nothing you could do in the game short of cheating/hacking would let you actually access them. This Lock feature would continue for every main series game that followed, though it would almost exclusively apply to Legendary Pokémon, and would often be taken off of them the generation later- and while I understand the inconsistency between a Pokémon's appearance in story cutscenes and actual battle would be awkward, it is still frustrating that such cool designs like Shiny Victini are completely unavailable.

It wasn’t all bad, though, since through some of these mechanics and the growing popularity of the franchise, more players were exposed to the idea of Shiny Pokémon. Black 2 and White 2 also had the games’ second and third Guaranteed Shinies in the form of a gift Gible or Dratini (depending on version) available through a postgame challenge and a Haxorus catchable in an area unlocked by completing the regional Pokédex. This was also when they were more exposed in other media- more TCG cards, their appearance in one of the movies (and the associated in-game events), etcetera.

Were it not for Generation V’s changes and additions, it’s very likely that Shiny Pokémon would be substantially more obscure than the popular huntable prize they are now. For better or for worse, I suppose. Probably better, ultimately, because they are pretty much just a fun thing to have around? I’m not sure how I feel about people spending hours upon hours for a slightly differently coloured mon (though I have done it a couple times), but it’s just a nice thing that exists for people. A little mystery to a series that’s so utterly picked apart, as it were.

[codenamewitcher]

I just want y’all to know that this first started out as a post on how Sylvie’s character arc didn’t add up but as I got further into this it turned into an analysis of everything that has happened so far (episode four has yet to release) and how I would love how Sylvie comes about the TVA and her hatred for them.

Before I get into how I would love her arc to happen, I am going to talk about the TVA and how time works in the MCU real quick to understand why I would love things to go these ways and why I hope that the inconsistencies with Sylvie, Loki, and the TVA don’t just become a huge plot hole. I’m also placing a read more because it’s a lot that I’m going to be talking about.

So for starters, we know that the TVA stresses that they have to move quickly in removing a the variant and resetting the nexus event before it crosses the red line and can no longer be reset creating a multiverse. We also know that time works differently at the TVA (its a null time zone in the comics) and from Thor: Ragnarok we know that time can move differently on other planets (i.e. Loki falling from the Bifrost seconds before Thor did but still spending weeks on Sakaar before Thor arrives even though they fell from it seconds apart).

However, from what we have seen in the four times the TVA arrives at an nexus event, it appears they have anywhere from minutes to maybe even a few hours to reset the branch before its too late, but it does have to happen within the day the event took place. We can assume this as we first see them catch the L1130 Loki Variant in the same day he broke from the Scared Timeline (we can’t say for sure how long it was on Earth before the TVA arrested him as we don’t know how long he was laying in the desert for but it was long enough for the native people surrounding where he landed in Gobi Desert to arrive). The second time, is in 1549 France and it seems like the TVA arrived minutes or seconds after that nexus event happened as the child with the candy from the future was still at the church. We see the very same thing happen at the 1858 Salina and 1985 Wisconsin nexus events where the TVA arrives minutes after the event or within the same time of day on the same day of the event. 

Now why am I mentioning all of this, well because the events that happened in Sylvie's life compared to Loki’s life are similar but very different compared to what, how, and when it took place in his. 

They are similar in the since that they both are adopted, both are children of Laufey, both are experts in magic welding, both are originally named Loki, and both wear similar clothing and headdresses. But that’s so far where the similarities end, they appear to be the same person but had different upbringings. 

Sylvie grew up without knowing her adoptive mother, her adopted mother either died or left early in her life, and she grew up knowing that she was adopted as well. 

Meanwhile Loki didn’t find out that he was adopted until much later in his life and he had a very close relationship with his adoptive mother who was very involved in his life and also didn’t die until much later in his life as well. 

These time differences in when Sylvie and Loki experience these things in their life are large as things happened earlier in Sylvie’s life and they happened later on in Loki’s life. 

Their personalities are even similar and but different at the same time because you can see that Loki doesn’t really plan on how he’s going to get to his end goal, he kinda just goes with the flow while Sylvie plans this shit in detail. Also Sylvie seems to be more serious about things while Loki jokes around and isn’t so serious (now this is what we have learned about Sylvie in episode three so far).

Now where I’m getting with this is, the TVA shows that the order of events in Loki’s life is what is supposed to happen in the Scared Timeline and not the order of events in Sylvie’s. 

Now a nexus event could’ve been created by Sylvie’s adoptive parents telling her she was adopted earlier and her mother dying or going away earlier than what was supposed to happen, but the way that Sylvie talks about her life is that she grew up with this knowledge. And so far its consistent that the TVA needs to show up within minutes, hours, or within the same day the nexus event took place in. And even if Sylvie grew up on another planet other than Asgard or even on Asgard where time can move differently than on Earth it wouldn’t make much of a difference as the TVA needs to show up close in time to when the nexus event happened and not years later where Sylvie would grow up with this knowledge which would cause a multiverse event. 

Now when I started this, it was to point out how Sylvie didn’t really seem like a Loki Variant due to the large time gaps in how key moments in Loki’s life happened happened later on than in Sylvie’s. At first I was thinking that Sylvie and Loki are connected some way but she may not be a Loki Variant, like she could’ve been from another universe, one that was destroyed by the Time-Keepers because at the time of the multiversal war, we don’t now how far into the future those six timelines were. Loki is a thousand years old or close to it, so those timelines could have already been that advanced and we could have 6 different versions of Loki’s that lived different lives but are still similar enough be like “Hey, that’s a Loki.” But as I got further into this analysis, I realized that was a reach, it could still happen, but its the most unlikely to me out of the theories I came up with.

My second theory was that Sylvie was caught by the TVA as a male version of Loki as they refer to her as “he”, but the moment she escaped, she changed into and became Sylvie. However that still doesn’t fully explain the differences in the order of events in her life compared to Loki’s.

Now my third theory and one of two on how I would love to see Sylvie’s back story play out. So what if when Sylvie’s mother died/left earlier in her life, she was told about being adopted within that same time frame. At first I thought, what if the TVA arrested her, but another thing I’ve noticed with the TVA and responding to nexus events is that the TVA only arrests the variant and not someone effected by the variant’s decisions as they didn’t arrest the child from 1549 France, the festival goers of 1985 Wisconsin, or the Gobi Desert natives in 2012, they solely went after the variant in each of those cases. So now there’s the possibility that Sylvie witnessed her parents (or parent) getting arrested by the TVA and that branch got reset. She could have escaped the reset somehow and is now seeking vengeance for her family, and could explain the “This isn’t about you.” line from the end of episode two.

My fourth theory and the second one I would love to see happen with Sylvie’s back story play is that somehow she ended up working for the TVA, got her memories suppressed like the other agents/hunters, and then ultimately found out about the memory suppression. This would explain how she doesn’t have very many memories of her mother just “blips of a dream” as she says in episode three without her mother dying or disappearing while she was at a young age and this will still allow for the order of events to play out how they should be in Sylvie’s life according to the Scared Timeline. And to explain how the topic of being told about her adoption by her parents could still happen with this, 2012 Loki asked Sylvie if they told her about the adoption, she says yes and then asks Loki the same question and his response is, “No. I mean, they did, eventually”. We know that Loki in the Scared Timeline eventually accepts his adoption and being an Odinson so Sylvie could’ve very well accepted this rather it was in the Scared Timeline or during her years of plotting the take down of the TVA.

But anyways these are just some thoughts I’ve had, my process of these thoughts and understanding this world, and my hope that they don’t let this be a huge plot hole because it has so much potential and shouldn’t be ignored. I know that this is a lot, its literally a weeks worth of thoughts I’ve had since the third episode, but thanks for staying this long for my spill if you did or if any of you did.

[aotopmha]

Notes on an early scan of chapter 134:

-I'm really not sure how to treat Historia's plot thread at this point.

This made it pretty clear that Historia's pregnancy is probably very real, but at the same time it's still framed in suspicious ways. We still don't see any of her thoughts or any substantial answers to what is going on with her. It is still very much an unresolved mystery and I hold back my judgement in that sense.

I've said before that I don't see many ways (or any at all) in which the story could resolve Historia's character arc in a satisfactory way with the pregnancy being real; aside from being a gay-coded character that never showed any romantic interest in dudes before this, I feel she would never potentially doom anyone to a role they did not choose because since she was young she was pushed to play roles herself.

Perhaps this is the point, she is once again being forced into a role by the world and this time she is also forced do so with another life; perhaps her arc ends with the SL defeating Eren and creating at least some solution that doesn't need the Titan cycle anymore. Historia and her child would be safe to live as they want beyond it.

Perhaps it is something else entirely. I'm treating it as a separate thing because I think it, by nature, contradicts the series' themes. One of the ideas the story explores is disrupting the hurtful status quo, but pushing a gay character into a hetero box is the exact opposite of that and so is playing into the broken system the character initially rejected, even if it is supposed to be the tragedy of her character.

My biggest pet peeve with a story is when it is thematically inconsistent and right now the only inconsistency in terms of ideas in the story to me is Historia's character arc in this final arc. How I will see the story by its end considering the possible flaws in the writing of her character will ultimately pan out once everything about her is revealed.

So for right now I'm putting it in a separate box.

I'm in for the long haul because I think the story has been really strong despite the problems I have with it.

Will I be able to look past the flaws or will this ending stretch ultimately ruin the story for me? We'll see.

I think I'll always treasure the high points of the story, though. So I think no matter what, I'll never completely abandon it, lay out my likes and dislikes, sure, but I think it has been strong enough to stay in my heart no matter what comes in this final stretch.

Moving on from this box, then, other than the Historia moment, I actually feel like there wasn't much else to talk about in this chapter.

This is probably the first chapter in forever I felt emulated chapter 46/63/73 in that it was very low on actually new information.

The plane crew pulling it together and finally deciding to take action and take the huge Titan down is a rewarding cliffhanger, the spectacle is excellent and as expected the allied fleet is defeated easily, as a destroyed small hope as I expected, too, but there really isn't much for me to sink my teeth in.

There is the beginnings of understanding with the Marleyan soldier, Isayama does this perspective thing quite a bit by occasionally having some no names express their ideas.

He did it in chapter 14 with the citizens of Rose and Shina talking about Eren's power before his trial, he did it with the citizens in the Orvud attack in chapter 67-68. He has done it with Marley with the people talking about the Middle Eastern boy Ramsey and the varying reactions from Paradis people as the walls collapsed on them. He uses fodder as mouthpieces quite often and often also makes their perspectives more complex with further elaboration from actual characters. So I think the solution to everything will contain that idea, but will be a little bit more nuanced than that.

I've seen people say that the story is dragging a while now, but I've never felt it, to me some of the chapters even actually didn't get the breathing room they needed, but now I'm really feeling the story spinning its wheels.

The point of the speech to me is that mistreatment of people causes them to develop hatred towards the other side in return, so the solution is to, at some point, look past of it. It's the standard hatred creates more hatred idea we've seen thrown around a whole bunch with Nicolo overcoming it and Eren succumbing to it. In this chapter, Karina is also starting to see what exactly she put Reiner through. It's focus on small steps amidst despair (as is the name of the chapter) that will probably come to play in the finale of the story.

Strangely enough, the children are the future idea makes a return here. It is strange to me because it's been such a minor theme in the story and hasn't shown up in quite a while.

I could care less for it, take it or leave it. Doesn't change much of anything for me.

The scenes of people dying from the rumbling also leave me ambivalent this time around, we've seen it several chapters now and those cases fleshed out individual perspectives. Here it's just random crowds dying, which is awful and I am actually glad to see further substance that shows what Eren is doing is horrible, but also not as effective because of no real personal element to it.

In essence there isn't anything much new in here except the end with the 104th's resolve.

I would argue the only other new detail is that Eren is using the Beast Titan in a very separated way from Zeke. I think he created a separate version of the Titan itself to use. This means Zeke is probably still stuck there on Eren's Titan body and there is now an opportunity for him to contribute to Eren's defeat.

So I'm mostly fairly indifferent to this chapter. It's another setup chapter, but inspires very little emotion from me.

I am, however, still excited for what is coming next because of the unresolved mysteries.

Once the CR/Comixology scans come out, I might post some additional thoughts.

[mochiotomedumplings]

so i had a quick lesson on the history? of the theory of ‘cognitive functions’, or in actuality ‘the amalgamation of people’s attempts to break down and categorize thinking preferences over the years’.

yes i was part of the uncultured who thought cognitive functions as the real thing that underlies mbti, jung’s, type theory as a whole. i thought there was a thing called ‘jungian theory’ that was the foundation to all that followed, but a fairly informative article on the evolution of cognitive functions on the sakinorva website has enlightened me to the true state of the matter: mbti is actually very separate from jungian theory.

both these personality-related theories have some allusion, in different extents, to the categorization of thinking processes by means of ‘cognitive functions’. however, the article has pointed out and demonstrated that these theories have quite the difference in how they each define the ‘cognitive functions’ that was supposed to underly their theory. it also does not help that ‘cognitive functions’ is most likely an abstract construct that cannot readily be empirically proven, while subjective reports will tend to be inconsistent and easily influenced by other factors of personality.

this made me kinda lose hope for a few minutes because *then what’s the point of personality science* but surely, perhaps, there is a point in trying to logically understand thinking preferences. because surely people think differently, and also simlarly, and knowing what thinking mode you prefer would help you find out what activities you would potentially have an easier time doing, just like how physical traits play a role in certain jobs. in that sense, perhaps the big five has already done that, but as a fairly universal trait system it has its limitation in really pointing out the ‘kind’ of activities that someone would enjoy. maybe i should go into cognitive science and not personality science…

i just don’t want to feel like i’m going into astrology all over again… in a sense it’s quite similar: correlating personality, the human experience, to abstract symbols that can’t be proven. and so, if i can make my theory of ‘cognitive functions’ into something that can be universally tested like the big five… that would make it less subjective, indeed.

but how can it be tested, what would be the criteria for accuracy? if personality is self-narrative like we have defined, and ‘cognitive functions’ is ultimately a subjective assessment, what non-subjective construct can it be linked to?

brain science is the way, but woe is me in trying to pick up neuroscience. but that is perhaps more relevant to what i want to do compared to pure psychology…

for reference, here’s the sakinorva post mentioned earlier:

https://sakinorva.net/library/contextualizing_functions