#like the order of precedence is

[the-dog-watch]

The Thirteen-Gun Salute

me: i am fundamentally opposed to the british empire and all forms of colonialism and imperialism. history is a record of their atrocities.

my therapist: that's fair

me: but i love it when god's chosen captain jack aubrey is restored to the navy list and reclaims his sword so ere long he may draw it once more in the honorable defense of his country.

my therapist: who doesn't?

(once again, apologies to the OP)

Patrick O'Brian loves to repeat character-types throughout the Aubrey/Maturin series. For example, the  beautiful, fashionable lady spies who end up embroiled in Stephen’s intelligence work, characters  like Mrs. Wogan in Desolation Island or Mrs. Fielding in Treason's Harbour. Enjoyable in their way (personally I have a lot of fondness for Mrs. Fielding’s failed seduction in The Ionian Mission) but I never find myself that interested in them on their own, or at least not as interested in them as I am in the original; they’re all pale shades of Diana. They might be fancy and beautiful and high class but they lack her ineffable quality of being a messy bitch.

If Diana is the red-blooded progenitor of the Beautiful Lady Spy archetype, then Stephen is the progenitor of another recurring character type: the Bisexual Man with Mental Health problems, another iteration of which is Lord Clonfert from The Mauritius Command, who was the most interesting part of what I personally find to be the weakest, most insubstantial of the books. In Jo Walton’s reading guide, which I’ve been using a little bit, one of the commenters pointed out that the dipsomaniac doctor McAdams and Lord Clonfert are "dark reflections" of Stephen and Jack, an idea I find fascinating. Mirror universe Aubrey and Maturin...spooky!

But anyway, I bring this up because Andrew Wray is yet another iteration of the Bisexual Man with Mental Health Problems, certainly a more destructive and a much more functional antagonist than Clonfert ever was. I really liked the dissection scene; in her review Jo Walton said she found it so gruesome she almost "didn't want to know Stephen anymore;" no disrespect to her but some of us are built different. This is one of my favorite Stephen Maturin crazy ass moments of all time, up there with self-surgery in HMS Surprise and that time he stocked up on too many stimulants in Sweden and accidentally turned all the ship's rats into coke fiends.

But, sadly, overall the messy gay drama with Wray and Ledward (WHO THE FUCK EVEN WAS LEDWARD did we ever even see him speak????) was a little too understated, even for me. Obviously I didn't expect Stephen or Jack to get revenge on them in the traditional way, but something a little more definite than Jack getting pissy at a dinner after the fact could have done the trick, I think.

The dissatisfaction I feel with it is what brings me back to Clonfert; the actual plot of The Mauritius Command feels very remote and inert to me, and Clonfert is the most vivid part. Jack is so basically above him in all ways (or so Stephen describes it) that Clonfert completely destroys himself out of his neuroses and Jack is shielded by Stephen from ever even knowing about or being hurt by it. It was similarly anticlimactic but there was an element of tragedy and pathos to it, and Stephen’s shielding Jack from the disturbing truth has an echo in Stephen’s own inability to fully open up to Jack about Diana, Stephen's inability to open up about pretty much everything.

Thankfully, this book has way more going for it than The Mauritius Command. I like the rhythm and episodic nature of these latter books much more than TMC's rigid retelling of a historical naval campaign. Stephen re-living some of his revolutionary past with the United Irishmen, and re-living some of the divided loyalties poor James Dillon (may he rest in pieces) felt in the first novel was a welcome call back, the Kumai trip was generally wonderful, I was pretty happy about Jack's ultimate ambivalence about being reinstated in the Navy again, and I LOVE the Stephen Maturin Strikes It Rich storyline (more on that next time I think; I do think it's very funny that when it comes to money, neither Stephen nor Jack is 'the smart one.')

I got to really love the Diane, and this is the first time we’ve had a genuine shipwreck; as exciting as that was, it was genuinely heartbreaking to lose her. RIP Diane but I’m already well into the next book and in love with my new girl (Nutmeg of Consolation, you will always be famous. 😭)

Personal Ranking

The Far Side of the World (10) > HMS Surprise (3) > Desolation Island (5) > The Reverse of the Medal (11) > The Ionian Mission (8) > The Fortune of War (6) > Master & Commander (1) > The Surgeon’s Mate (7) > Treason's Harbour (9) > The Letter of Marque (12) > The Thirteen-Gun Salute (13) > Post Captain (2) > The Mauritius Command (4)

[panharmonium]

something about how yamato’s immediate and instinctive first reaction is to call out for itachi when all twelve of these coffins (including the ones containing asuma and hayate) open up at exactly the same time is really hitting me in a certain way right now

[whetstonefires]

Thinking endlessly about how the classical Athenians were like, so, on the one hand, many administrative tasks on which our civic apparatus relies require expertise.

But on the other hand, if we appoint leaders to necessary positions on the basis that they're the ones who are best suited to that work due to knowing all about it, that's putting real power in their hands, for an extended period instead of a safe little increment, which sets up our nice democracy of Every Free Adult Native Male Who Can Afford Armor to collapse very quickly into a narrow oligarchy.

But the fact remains that administration actually is skilled labor, especially on the tens-of-thousands-of-people scale they were dealing with, and also involves situations where it's impractical to run every step of a process through a committee. Not that they really wanted to acknowledge this but they were stuck with it a bit. If nothing else, people have day jobs, they can't always be voting.

But fulltime governators for whom this is their day job have too much power.

And the way they solved this was, most of the institutional memory and expertise and even exercise of force in the name of civic order was invested in slaves.

Mint workers? Executive accountancy clerks? Cops? All state property.

Very Important Job of distinguishing counterfeit coinage: public slave. Fifty lashes if he shirked or fucked up or cheated. Considerable authority in the context of the job. Could live quite a comfortable life. Absolutely no chance of his using this role as a springboard for building a political base and usurping authority, because he didn't have legal status.

This freed the actual executive positions up to be filled by people given one-year terms by lottery who had the authority to make (routine) calls but no personal power associated with the office; they didn't have to know shit to do the job and this kept them interchangeable.

Except generals, apparently. The Athenians were like, okay generals really do have to know what the fuck they're doing or we'll all die, but we can't make military service the defining feature of citizenship, and then put ourselves under the command of a non-citizen.

(Not even because like they couldn't entrust a slave with so much power, although being under threat of a lashing if people don't like your decisions probably isn't great for making strong strategic and tactical calls; it's the cognitive dissonance.)

So they had ten elected generalships, with less term limitation, and it was in fact a good avenue by which to build a political career.

But like, what the fuck huh?

[raayllum]

TDP + making decisions that accidentally put yourself and other people in harm’s way 

[gameboyhamazing]

hey splatoon lore lovers is there any precedent for furry mammals beyond judd and the splat 3 story mode I have something I wanna write

[gloucesterroad]

Im watching the hbomberguy video essay about plagiarism and obviously plagiarism in creative spaces is reprehensible but also I love that, to some extent, plagiarism just does not exist for lawyers (making my life so much easier)

“precedent” is a very important thing not only for doing the client due diligence but also minimising their costs

if the silk or the judge said something in exactly the right way you better believe you need to say it in those exact words because not to do so would make you look like a king idiot

[entropii]

These little ones are also wai.

[nomaishuttle]

sorry for falling for nostalgiabaiting. does it count as nostalgia if its for a game i played like. last year. whatever

[cluster-b-culture-is]

NPD culture is that i should probably mention to my therapist how annoyed I get that my brother's foot problems are always the center of attention but my joint pain seems to be constantly on the back burner and he's beeb doing this for almost 10 years so when am i going to get attention for my pain? but tbh I'm just used to it from every party involved 🤷 such is the younger sibling way

[blueish-bird]

do you think the Christian God/heaven actually exists in CSM or do you think the only reason Angel tells a dying woman that she’s going to heaven is to help her be less afraid?

[ct-hardcase]

totj last episode spoilers ahead:

alright so uh. I really don’t know how to feel about the last totj episode (I enjoyed all the others!!!) since it has similar vibes to the novel but with all of what I’d consider integral and interesting to the story filed off.

And btw, I am/was more than willing to set this in canon after the novel but the story beats here (Ahsoka getting back into contact with Bail/using his ships to rescue the remaining farmers, the setting seeming almost a copy/paste farm planet with mountains/rolling hills, the fact that it was specifically a blow to the inquisitor’s face that killed him, Ahsoka not drawing her lightsaber once during the fight) but there are enough differences for me to hesitate to say they’re the same thing (the completely different cast, the way the inquisitor was called to the village, the imperial presence being more removed from the villagers).

So this leaves me (and canon, I suspect) in this gray area, where referring to Ahsoka’s past could refer you to the events of the novel, or this, and it’s not really clear which one, leaving the novel to be completely ignored/disposed of.

And on top of that it’s weird because I feel it thematically works with the rest of the episodes’ story arcs but metatextually plays weird with the novel and leaves me with a lot of weird feelings about the whole thing

[d*nt rb]

[tardis--dreams]

I should probably ask* my professor if i can send him my proposal until sunday evening but i'm so ashamed i can't even think of what to say

*inform him that i fucked up once again

[jedie]

brotherhood below spoilers

just thinking about how those very same younglings anakin gave a speech to about becoming a knight and what he learned in his years as a padawan were probably slaughtered by him not even a few years later.

[starfolk7]

1, 7 and 12 for Laurence (Bloodborne)

Yaaaay, my boy Laurence!!! X3

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

Oh boy, so this is kind of a long explanation. So I didn't really think much of him at first! His fight was absolute hell for me and my first character build, we don't talk about how long it took me to beat him fjdhdhdh. But!! As I started to plot out Sibyl's fic, I realized I needed to write Laurence because they're basically foils that will strangle each other given the chance (totally different story lmao). Sooooo I started analyzing his character more and building headcanons, and before I knew it I was totally in love with this trash can of a man (and writing a whole other separate fic full of self indulgence but that's ALSO another story jdhdhds)

I just. Really love the tragedy of his arc. The hubris of a man clearly cunning enough to head an institution that enables the darkest sides of humanity all in the pursuit of knowledge, and the downfall that follows. There's so much to play with there, hence why I adore writing him during the days of the Old Hunters. I'm hoping to get back to writing him someday soon, he's such a disaster jdhdhsd

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

Allow him to be the piece of shit he is. No, seriously. I love injecting him with humanity, as he probably was SO much more than what we've been told, but!! I also love when people explore just how far he personally went into the depths when it came to blood research and experimentation. He can be multi-faceted! Like. Have him conduct a horrific experiment and then make tea an hour later acting like none of it phased him. Some part of it probably did, but will he tell a soul? Nope, not likely. Mans can wrestle with his demons while also still carrying out horrific shit.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

*smacks his ass* This vicar can hold so many headcanons! (I am not sorry for that bit lol)

Lesse, aside from the red hair? I have so many headcanons for him it's actually insane. He's a polyglot in my book. English and Latin are obvs what he knows best, but I like to think he's extensively studied a few other languages just to cover his bases. My version of him somehow skipped over German, so his attempts at courting an OC that speaks fluent German are an absolute disaster. Cue him trying to learn the basics of the language between all of his other duties. I love putting him through the wringer lol.

I also think he likes to keep himself as clean as possible. Funny coming from a man that works with blood on the daily, but he scrubs that shit off as soon as possible. Yharnam may be a wreck, but he doesn't have to reflect it. Public image to maintain and all of that!

[demilypyro]

So I've seen a few too many people on twitter talking about The Kiss Scene from the new Scott Pilgrim anime. People saying it's fetishistic and indulgent, people calling it male gazey, etc. And while the kiss itself is certainly a bit exaggerated, I felt like writing a bit about why I disagree, and why context is important, like it always is. But it basically turned into an extended analysis on the metatextual treatment of Roxie Richter. So bear with me. It's a long post.

What really matters about this scene is not the kiss itself, but what precedes it. Not even just the fight scene just before it, but what precedes the whole anime series, really. And that's the Scott Pilgrim comic book, and the live action movie. Because in both, Roxie is a punchline.

She's a joke. Her character starts and ends with "one of the exes is actually a girl, I bet you didn't expect that." Jokes are made about Ramona's latent bisexuality, the movie especially treating it as funny and absurd, and her validity as a romantic interest is entirely written off by Ramona as being "just a phase." There's a fight scene, she's defeated by a man giving her an orgasm which implicitly calls her sexuality into question (come on), and the movie just moves on. It sucks. It really, really sucks.

The comic fares a little better. It never veers into outright homophobia like the movie does, and while the line about Ramona having gone through a phase remains, Roxie actually gets one over on Scott when Ramona briefly gets back with Roxie. But Roxie is still only barely a character. Like all the other evil exes, she's just a stepping stone towards the male protagonist's development. She barely even gets any screentime before she's defeated by Scott's "power of love." But Roxie stands out, since she's the only villain who is queer, or at least had been confirmed queer at that point (hi Todd). In a series that champions multiple gay men in the supporting cast, the single undeniable lesbian in the story is a villain. She's labeled as evil, made fun of, pushed aside in favor of the men, and then discarded. Her screentime was never about her, or her feelings for Ramona. It was about the straight, male protagonist needing to overcome her. And that was Roxie Richter. An unfortunate victim of the 2010s.

Fast forward to current year, and the new anime series is announced. Everybody sits down to watch the new series expecting another retelling of the same story, and.... hang on, that straight male protagonist I mentioned just died in the first episode. And now it's humanizing the villains from the original story. And there's Roxie, introduced alongside the other evil exes in the second episode, and she's being played entirely straight, without a punchline in sight. No jokes are made about her gender, no questions are made of her validity as one of Ramona's romantic interests. The narrative considers her important. In one episode, she already gets more respect than she did in either of the previous iterations of Scott Pilgrim. And this isn't even her focus episode yet... which happens to be the very next one.

The anime series goes to great lengths to flesh out the original story's villains and to have Ramona reconcile with them. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Roxie gets to go first. While Matthew Patel gets his development in episode 2, Roxie is the first to directly confront Ramona, now our main protagonist. This is notable too because it's the only time the exes are encountered out of order. Roxie is supposed to be number 4, but she's first in line, and later on you realize that she's the only one who's out of sequence. She's the one who sets the precedent for the villains being redeemed. She's the most important character for Ramona to reconcile with.

What follows is probably the most extensive, elaborate 1 on 1 fight scene in the whole show. Roxie fights like a wounded animal, her motions are desperate and pained. Ramona can only barely fight back against her onslaught. Different set-pieces fly by at breakneck speed as Roxie relentlessly lays her feelings at Ramona's feet through her attacks and her distraught shouts. And unlike the comic or the movie, Ramona acknowledges them, and sincerely apologizes. And the two end up just laying there, exhausted, reminiscing about when they were together.

Only after this, after all of this, does the kiss scene happen. Roxie has been vindicated, she has reconciled with the person who hurt her, the narrative has deemed that her anger is justified and has redeemed her character. And she gets her victory lap by making the nearest other hot girl question her heterosexuality, sharing a sloppy kiss with her as the music triumphantly crescendos.

It's... a little self-congratulatory, honestly. But it's good. It's redemption for a character who had been mistreated for over a decade. And she punctuates the moment by being very, very gay where everyone can see it, no men anywhere in sight. Because this is her moment. And then she leaves the plot, on her own accord this time, while humming the hampster dance. What a legend. How could anything be wrong with this.

[consolecadet]

Big news: Google has lost its first antitrust case. Via Matt Stoller:

So what happens now? In this case, the judge will come up with remedies next year. The order could be broad, and will likely loosen Google’s control over the mobile app ecosystem. Google has already announced that it will appeal, so the case isn’t over.

That said, Google is likely to be in trouble now, because it is facing multiple antitrust cases, and these kinds of decisions have a bandwagon effect. The precedent is set, in every case going forward the firm will now be seen as presumed guilty, since a jury found Google has violated antitrust laws. Judges are cautious, and are generally afraid of being the first to make a precedent-setting decision. Now they won’t have to. In fact, judges and juries will now have to find a reason to rule for Google. If, say, Judge Amit Mehta in D.C., facing a very similar fact-pattern, chooses to let Google off the hook, well, he’ll look pretty bad.