#simplification tricks

[edusquaremaths]

Square of numbers around 100 Part-1 | #squaretrick #vedicmaths #mathtricks #shortvideo #vedicmaths

Square Tricks | Maths Tricks | Vedic Maths| Square tricks for 101,102,103,104…Cool tricks by @EduSqaureMathsSquare Tricks | Multiplication Tricks | Square Tricks | Maths Tricks | Vedic Mathsshorts #short #shortvideo #mathsedusquaremaths #squareofanumber

[vintagerpg]

This is the expanded, stand-alone edition of The Dare (2020), a legendary Kevin A. Ross scenario for Call of Cthulhu. It was originally designed as a tournament module, run in the late ’80s and is notable for being one of, if not the, first RPG scenarios with kid player characters. The scenario only saw print once previously, as part of the anthology Dwellers in Shadow (1996), from Triad Entertainments. Even at that point in time, I can’t think of many, if any, scenarios that have kids in the lead roles.

What we have here is a very detailed haunted house that the trick-or-treating player characters are dared to enter. In the caves beneath the house lurks a child-eating witch, and the house is full of her familiars (rat things, cat things, bat things and so on). Even the kid who dares the players to go in is in on the scheme — he’s just an empty suit of skin, worn by a hivemind of verminous insects. Once inside the house, the kids are harried by the servants, and hopefully picked off one by one, while the witch monitors progress via the mirrors in the house and generally complicates things with her spells. Its a suitably horrible one-shot that is probably wind up with one or more kids eaten by a cannibal witch. Good times!

Also a good time is the “Kid-Thulhu” rules, which amounts to a simplification of the 7e Call of Cthulhu. I’m unclear whether this was designed by the Sentinel Hill Press folks or Chaosium, but it’s great. Especially the age-appropriate skills like “Play with Matches,” “Be a Pal,” “Spooky Stuff” and more. That these are cute, though, does not mean horrible things won’t happen to this costumed investigators. Be warned!

[wonderr-skyy]

Free artist's tutorials that have helped me!

Ethan Becker, He's helped me get through my art block many times! I'd say this one is good for young artists or artist who are struggling and feeling low.

Proko is good for intermediate artists who want to practice specific sections of their art: so like, want to get better at body proportions, etc. Proko is good for everyday quick sketches.

Lastly, my 3 faves are:

Angel Ganev. He makes comedic and really good tips and tricks videos for specific things. If you're looking for a quick fix in one of your drawings. Like you're trying really hard to draw eyes, lips, etc, and you're strugling to find a video on that, you can find it with Angel!

Sinix Design he's really good at simplifing tough art with ideas you can use in your own stress-free way. He's also really good at talking and helping you de-stress about your art, and has a relaxing voice to listen to, so that also helps. So he's also one of my favs!

Marco Bucci is for advanced artists I'd say. I'm not to his level yet but I like watching his videos to give myself a goal. I want to be like him one day <3

[year2000electronics]

I desire to see a post ABT the uhhhh book of Bill changing for everyone lmao

I desire to see your take on it

IVE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS A LOT. before TBOB released i was ruminating on what ford's version of the book looked like, and i guess you could say i was proven wrong?

ford says his is "mostly" extremely complex riddles. you could easily take that as like 99% of the book, but i think back to the missing journal pages and how ford frequently lets his shame bury his past. and i feel like theres just enough wiggle room here to imagine more stuff. other stuff.

im not sure if i agree with this totally, coming back to it, just because we see in TBOB that bill HATES to admit he was wrong or even vulnerable, but i guess i could see it as a bait, or a goad? idk i just like the idea that little parts of the book of bill of bill trying to play on him and ford's old relationship and his ego.

can you imagine if ford's version of the book of bill claimed to be the "only TRUE version, the others are just fakes"? because youre just that special, stanford. only you can see past all of my empty threats. only you can see the true bill. (saying this as another lie, of course)

i think a similar logic probably also applies to the other pines', because each of them take a moment to give a more broad, jokey overview of what their book looks like ("a guide to everyone whos ever had a crush on you", "a guide to winning the lottery every time" etc.) but i believe its definitely just a simplification to prove that TBOB is different for everyone and you could guess whats in there yourself in fanon!

i guess what id be most interested to see is stanley's. bill is literally FUMING at stanley so hard. im not sure he could get it together to ACTUALLY try to trick him.

judging by the energy of bill's thisisnotawebsite posts about stan and the wheel of shame image (looking at this image literally hurts so bad btw.) i feel like he would be going for the throat a LOT. trying to wear stan down by heckling him and attacking his weak points (and also definitely projecting onto him) and once hes worn down, perhaps the end of the book would have bill offering for him to do "the first worthwhile thing in his life"

I DUNNO THOUGH! endless ways to speculate. truly endless

[thetruescholar]

The Fatui is the military of Her Majesty The Tsaritsa. We do her bidding to rid the world of overarching governments.

A call comes in, and on the other side of the line is an almost 40 year old woman with the drawl of a mad scientist.

How fascinating you are. I have heard of your arm, as a prostheticist I must study it. No arm can be as worthless as the arm of that astrologist.

@thetruescholar

On the other end, Kaleb chuckles.

Well, guess word travels fast. I mean... if you make sure to not take it apart enough I can't use it, I suppose after 200 years in a box it could use a tune-up. You think you're up to the task, doctor...?

[fliptoast]

Aunt Mopsey

      One must be particularly insane to enter the service of a Nowhere Hour. For one there is no set path to ascend under them. The Watchman requires a sacrifice of the uninitiated, and you must watch them, unfeeling as they burn with knowledge not meant for them. The Forge of Days requires the fiery destruction of something and then beautiful creation from its ashes. The Mother of Ants asks that you open yourself to gates flung wide through scarring, either the body or the mind. The Cornel and the Lionsmith require you and another to ascend in a show of blood and teeth and hatred, and commit yourself to this private dance of a two-person war forever. Even those less commonly ascended under have guesses associated with their paths to ascension. Though it is somewhat luck for the Egalist to turn his head to you, accepting your own mortality and the mortality of others in a grand show increases your odds. The Wolf Divided seems to require your death by your own hand, fulfilling its own lifelong desire. Find the house of the Moon, ascend under the Meniscate. Eat and fuck and feel, ascend under the Red Grail. Of course, these are all simplifications, but the point should be clear. There is at the barest of minimums an idea of how to get the attention of any given hour, and for some a set list of demands others have learned will get you into their service. All this preamble to bring up the oddity that is Aunt Mopsey.

            She is pleasant to talk to. She asks you call her aunt, and she certainly feels like one. She is kind and thoughtful and enjoys listening to anyone who will speak to her. When she asks something of you, you are compensated accordingly. She does not trick or manipulate or lie. The worst anyone can say about her is that perhaps she can be hard to understand with her habit of speaking in riddles or perhaps she is a little blunt. Perhaps her sense of boundaries can also be a bit screwy, considering when you ask how she gets places that seem locked or hidden she will always reply “someone let me in”, but aren’t these just small things? No one would expect her to be a name for an hour at all, much less for one as malicious as the Mare-in-the-Tree.

            The mystery of Aunt Mopsey does not end there though. She is no ordinary Name. Names serve an hour, but no other Name is given a title quite like Aunt Mopsey. She is called a herald, a herald for the Mare-in-the-Tree. Where Mopsey goes, the Mare-in-the-Tree is said to follow. Those Mopsey speaks to are said to be under the influence of the Mare-in-the-Tree. Extreme theories tend to equate Mopsey to nothing but a puppet or meat suit for the Mare-in-the-Tree, saying Mopsey is a shell the Hour speaks through.

Regardless to the relationship between Mopsey and the Mare-in-the-Tree, the fact remains, Mopsey is one of a kind. The only known Name of a Nowhere hour, and one of the more explicitly malicious ones at that. And the pinnacle of the mystery surrounding this woman, is how. There are no other Names, at least not ones who can speak to compare Mopsey too. Her speech doesn’t lend itself to answering such questions as straightforward as “how did you ascend?” The best guess anyone has is that Mopsey, the human if she ever was one, had to be mad. Mad enough to enter the Manaus, and willingly open the door to Nowhere, going against every instinct every dreamer has ever had. From there, no one will ever know how the ascension played out. All that is known is there is a woman, found only in Numa, who speaks in riddles, is pleasant to talk to, and heralds a great evil, an evil always only one step behind her gentle smile.

[confessionsofamasc]

#1

I was born in a hospital that I drive by sometimes. I don’t understand gender or sex more than anyone. I’ve read a lot of theory. I’ve taken comfort in it. It hasn't changed my conditions, but it's granted me a sense of stability. The best of it offers clarification. The worst of it makes me feel like I don’t exist. It’s like anything, it’s complicated. It has made me suspicious of any unifying theory of gender, of simplification. That abstraction feels like more of the same. The reduction, the disappearance, the slow death. Everything begs the question and everyone is too afraid to try and answer it.

The more I read the more ambiguity I am able to accept in myself and others. It usually isn't reciprocated.

I’m a man. Right now my hair is long. It’s annoying, it gets in the way. Recently I was enjoying wearing feminine clothing, but not so much at the moment. I used to date women. I used to be a lesbian. I used to be butch, in a lot of ways I still am. I got myself into a lot of trouble that way. I sought out people who could see my maleness somewhere inside of my womanhood. This was fraught. I try not to blame myself. My maleness made me vulnerable and people could tell. That's on them.

I don’t know what I look like. People see me as different things. I’ve been told that some of these different things lie in complete contradiction with each other. To some people I negate myself and they hate that. I don’t mind being a paradox. I didn’t make it a paradox. I know how I feel and I know what I want. How other people see me is not my responsibility. I know what feels right and what feels wrong. It's one of those things, like love. No justification needed. I like what this has given me, a general ambivalence I find freeing. No one owes me understanding, not even myself, just acceptance. I roll with the punches.

No one’s going to be able to know me from a short interaction. That’s fine. That’s not my problem. It’s not their problem either. But I correct them, I give them a chance. I am as honest as possible. It’s awkward. Sometimes it isn’t, sometimes there is that moment of two people meeting, like two comrades undercover. The nod, the smiles. Some people get angry. I avoid going places where they might be able to react. I don’t go out. Sometimes I don’t correct people. 

Sometimes I know that people want me to make myself smaller, more understandable, that I must diminish myself. Categorize, define, summarize, defend, defer. I get the feeling my complexity is the wrong kind of complexity. I hate deference, I want to be an equal participant in the conversation.

I was in line for a friend’s show, waiting to get my bag searched, my ID checked and a man behind me got close, started touching my bag. Same old. Bad jokes, mean jokes, stuff to try and make me feel vulnerable. Said he was putting his gun in my bag to hold onto. Trying to get me to engage to protect myself. Flatter him, don’t hurt his ego. That boring misogynistic flirting that kids start honing in grade school. I didn’t say anything. I made myself as uninteresting as I could. That hurt his feelings. “I bet you think I’m such an asshole”, he said with little kid anger. I continued to ignore him. I didn’t want him to hear my voice or see my face. He figured I was a girl. It's the hair. Then came his quick turn to vitriol, insults under his breath. I got inside and none of my friends were there yet. I pretended to be alright, cold-blooded. Like I don't feel anything.

I learned that quickly, that being a man is not a trump card, not for me. Some people tell me this can't be true, it's not the part about being a man. I become comprehensible to them only if they separate me from an important part of my whole, if they dictate myself back to me in a way they find acceptable, in line with their worldview. Sometimes I am asked to completely disavow it to be let back into life. That is a very old trick. I got tired of it when I was still a little girl.

I know that it is the catalyst. The thing about me, the nail in the coffin. No matter what kind of man I've been, it's been true. I can't forget it even if I'm told that I must be coming at it the wrong way because I have to hold that knowledge close to survive. When I abandon it I abandon myself. Bad things start to happen again.

Why is my understanding of the violence that happens to me up for debate? How can you debate a thing you can't even look wholly at? Who gets to abstract it, define it? I should really be asking, who decides what is too insignificant to be considered part of the definition? What violence gets to slip through the cracks, undefined as violence? Why? Why are my friends disappearing into abusive relationships like I did for most of my life? Why are my friends killing themselves? Why does no one notice?

I guess there are a lot of questions that everyone's afraid to ask.

[sciderman]

Reading the first few issues by Lee and Ditko and it's so interesting seeing that Peters main reason for being Spider-Man isn't wanting to be a hero and help people/stop badguys but earning money to support May, so when he gets into a supervillian fight it's either a coincidence that happened while he tried making money from them (taking pictures of them mainly) or getting caught up in their shit and either being nosey (Thinkerer) or being tricked by them (Chameleon) and it suddenly becomes a "vendetta" thing because either he was duped or spited by them. Whitch along with him being a self-isolating and kinda egoistical prick is such an interesting look at this "selfless symbol of heroism and responsibility" and i wish we got more of that in modern version of teen Peter.

honestly!!! really - it was kind of such a realisation when i went back into the spider-man comics to find out that "great power great responsibility" really honestly wasn't actually peter parker's driving motivation when starting, but actually something that he learns over years upon years – and even then, it really still isn't why he does it. he does it because that's how he gets his kicks.

and so now when i see peter kind of reduced to the "great power great responsibility" mindset, i feel like it's kind of a gross simplification of him - which is crazy, because i was kind of guilty of it, too.

i don't think peter even really fully understands "great power great responsibility" to this day. it's something he's still faced with, and something he still questions, every day.

i don't think any writer who reiterates those words even knows what it means. i've seen it written in so many contexts in the comics and other adaptations and audibly whispered under my breath "thhaat's not what it fucking meeeeeans....."

turns out! responsibility means a whole plethora of things, actually - and spider-man is often a way for peter to dodge his responsibilities as peter parker.

not only that, but uncle ben never actually says the words "great power great responsibility" to peter parker. it's just a narrative thing. he never says the words!!!!!! ! !! ! !

peter parker doesn't learn that lesson from uncle ben. and really, peter's entire reckoning with responsibility isn't that he owes the world his gifts as spider-man, but actually he has to take on new responsibilities after uncle ben's death - he has to support aunt may.

he has to support gwen, after captain stacy's death.

peter's whole "great responsibility" thing is about him struggling to keep up with all these very masculine roles and responsibilities being imposed upon him as he grows into a man. it's not actually a question of him owing the world his powers as spider-man - that's just a misunderstanding of the lesson that he's kind of buried himself into. he thinks it means he owes the world everything - and that's kind of what leads him to fail the people that he really should hold responsibility to.

it's so fun. it's so complicated. he throws all his responsibilities into his identity as spider-man, and acts in avoidance of his responsibilities as peter parker. sorry. i think about this a lot. i think about this a lot.

great power and great responsibility is such an interesting set of words that absolutely everyone has a different interpretation of. and some people reiterate it like it's meant to mean something, but it doesn't when they say it. like it's a set of words meant to be paired with spider-man but they kind of fall hollow when the person writing them actually doesn't think about the meaning of it. it's kind of almost lost all of it's meaning at this point.

[edusquaremaths]

Squaring a number ending in 5 | #squaretrick #vedicmaths #mathtricks #shortvideo #vedicmaths

Square Tricks | Maths Tricks | Vedic Maths| Square tricks for 15, 25, 35, 45…Cool tricks by @EduSqaureMathsSquare Tricks | Multiplication Tricks | Square Tricks | Maths Tricks | Vedic Mathsshorts #short #shortvideo #mathsedusquaremaths #squareofanumber

[bluravenite]

Do you also spend an hour zooming into your mutuals artwork deciphering how the fuck they art....

Like some people I can see it... I can tell what methods they use to determine the anatomy, how they shade or color, what tips and tricks they use to make their art look finished...

And then others I just...

What... What program is that, you mix trad and digital, but sometimes you don't leave the paper texture... You use edge brushes... Lots of color dodge glitter... It looks like clip studio... But those pencils are too procreate like... Your anatomy is a simplification... But I can't tell how you structure it... It feels like you have experience drawing from life or references, very flowing repeating lines, there aren't 3d shapes but there is depth in the features... You duplicate your line work and gaussian blur it over the last, your colors are interesting, dark desaturated with bright rim lights, you paint them on top like one would with markers.... I see you... And yet I cannot understand you at all...

[linisiane]

What do Rick Sanchez, Don Quixote, and Harry Du Bois Have in Common?

In all three of these stories, these characters are ‘self-aware’ in that they intentionally play into the tropes of the stories they’re satirizing (Rick Sanchez satirizing sitcoms, Don Quixote satirizing chivalric romances, and Harry Dubois satirizing roleplaying games). However, the trick to their ‘self-awareness’ is that they’re lying to themselves.

This post is LONG, so feel free to skip to the end if you're just interested in "The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois" (in bolded green) if you don't feel like reading the rest of the analysis. I go into the meaning of the political vision quests, the meaning of the 4th wall breaking RPG elements like copotypes and Jamrock Shuffling, and the effect this has on the player's relationship to Harry Du Bois!

(Common) Rick Sanchez (L)

Although Rick acts like he can see the audience and uses marketable catchphrases like “Wubbalubbadubdub” to appeal to sitcom sensibilities (“Bazinga;” “Did I do that?” “Legen- Wait For It -Dary;” etc.), the truth of the matter is that WITHIN HIS REALITY, he is not a sitcom character.

He truly does not know he’s in a sitcom.

He’s just an asshole.

ID A screenshot from the show Rick and Morty, with subtitled dialogue that says: Wubbalubbadubdub! That's my new thing! I'm kind of like, what's his name, Arsenio! Wubbalubbadubdub! See you next week. Beside the screenshot is a picture of the mentioned Arsenio, who is the titular character to a sitcom called The Arsenio Hall Show End ID

Rick has ATROCIOUS main character syndrome. Truly obnoxious. We happen to be enjoying (debate-able) it from our TV screens, but he doesn’t know that! Hoe’s just calling his family ‘side characters’ and taking them on traumatizing ‘B plot’ adventures to humor-cope with his multiverse induced nihilism. (it is NOT WORKING)

Dan Harmon, as a big fan of the storytelling theory behind sitcoms, has a thing for these type of self-aware-but-not-really characters in his shows. Abed (from his other well-known sitcom named ‘Community') is basically a film student obsessed with film tropes—

Which means he’s eternally making meta self-aware quips on the show without actually being self-aware. He’s not Deadpool, he's just a movie nerd.

It's a wink and a nod to show the audience, Hey, we’re aware that nowadays people are savvy enough to comment on when they’re in a wacky sitcom plot.

This is ‘some looney tunes type shit,’ amirite guys?

(This trick is called lampshading, it got popular recently with Marvel movies and the influence of Joss Whedon's writing (@dingdongyouarewrong), but it's also going through a bit of cliche fatigue right now. "That happened" jokes are an example that I know so many people are sick of, partly because it feels like writers include self-awareness/lampshading as a shield from criticism by pretending you can't critique a problem they're self-aware about!

Let me highlight it to you in the rest of this essay as a tool in satire/pastiche.)

'Donkey Hotel' (according to my speech to text)

To explain Donkey Hotel's deal, I must remark: This guy is on some ancient mental illness type beat.

Now, in the ancient era of Hippocrates, there used to be the hot idea that there are four major human temperaments, and these temperaments are influenced by the balances of liquids in our body called humors. And that an imbalance of the four would lead to an over representing of a temperament.

Don Quixote had a 'Choleric' temperament, which is an overrepresentation of yellow bile and characterized with qualities such as 'hot and dry' and emotional irregularities such as increased anger or behaving irrationally. That's our knight!

Now obviously we know that the idea of 4 Humors in our body controlling our temperament is a BS simplification of mental health, BUT, there’s usually a kernel of truth in ancient theories. The universe really was made up of elements like Aristotle theorized, just not the fire, earth, water, air that he thought they were.

Similarly, our author our man, Cervantes, was using the 4 Humors more to develop a physical/biological explanation to Don's mental illness.

All this to say, Don Quixote is currently deluding himself into believing he is a gallant knight, off to defend the honor of his lady love, the total paragon of a chivalric romance novel because, and I quote, “he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits.”

Let's pause.

An escapist stupor that completely wiped the mind of its host?

(FANART BY @so-engery! Check them out!)

ID Two images. One is is Gustave Dore's "Don Quixote Dreaming" drawing. The other is Disco Elysium fanart by Marie Enger @so-engery. Both showcase the main character of their respective works, slumped and surrounded by mad figments of their imagination, highlighting the parallels between the two. Harry with his Skill voices and Don with knights and fairytale creatures. End ID.

That’s our boy, Harrier Du Bois right there!

And while obviously Harry's condition at the start of Disco Elysium is more based on modern understanding of psychology (aka alcohol did it to him, not intense insomnia and a chivalric romance bookathon), it’s real neat we get this this little parallel before we even dig into Harry!

Now, with that neat explanation of why he’s self-aware out of the way, Don Quixote’s deal: Again, he’s not actually self-aware, he’s quite possibly the opposite of self-aware, and EVERYBODY (even the audience!) knows it. He’s only self aware in the sense that he’s acting like a character in a fictional story, which he is, but he’s got the wrong genre.

He thinks he’s in an action/romance, but he’s actually in real life—A satire of the action/romance genre!

Well, caveat.

Is Don Donning the 'Don' Inspirationally or is he Donning the 'Don' to Act as a Don About the Downs of Chivalry?

I read it as Don Quixote donning the 'don' title to act as a don at the college of 'please touch grass and stop romanticizing romantic chivalry.'

A super popular adaptational take, however, is to read him like he's an inspirational dreamer held back by a harsh reality.

Big Nate's Book Reviews on YouTube did a sweet review that highlights this perspective, along with his lil doobie,

that Don Quixote's perspective brings fresh child-like imagination and fantasy to the mundanity of the lives of the people around him. Nate says that Don Quixote and Sancho are "Truly the homies;" they're the first times he's ever felt that he could "find friends in characters in a book."

So there's definitely a joy and a message to the dreamer reading! BUT I tend to be a bit cynical about this, like it can feel a bit too similar to USAmerican Exceptionalism to me.

To clarify what I mean, let's do a Rick parallel.

Don Quixote, as a character, is more similar to the FANS of Rick and Morty than he is to Rick. (Which is its own commentary about how little we have progressed as a society since this book was published like 400 years ago, but also the way media is influenced by prior media.)

To explain THAT, lemme first say that there’s a sort of meta irony (which is how I describe this phenomena according to J-Reg’s theory of satire, but I don’t know the actual name of this) in the ‘he’s just like me fr’ guys. ‘Literally me’ guys. Guys who pseudo imitate Patrick Bateman, literally any Ryan gosling character, etc.

ID A youtube screenshot of 3 different videos titled "literally me" "Literally Me" or "Literally me (I'm mentally insane)" with different Ryan Reynolds characters as the thumbnail. In the "I'm mentally insane" video description, one of the tags is the word "sigma." End ID

Often these characters are meant to be made fun of as parodies of another trope, like Don Quixote is to a chivalric romance protagonist, but there’s a certain subset of the audience that is either too dumb to get it or just doesn’t have the context or background to get it.

Like the dudes who watch fight club, and just end up making fight clubs of their own. Or the way people misinterpreted Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ as celebrating the US, instead of its true message of lambasting the US for its hypocritical treatment of its veterans. Or the glorification of Rorschach from Watchmen despite him basically being a MAGA. Or the way USAmericans didn’t get Starship Troopers because it was a parody of US military fascism.

There are tons of examples of these because of satire usually says more about the reader/viewer than it does about the author, like a Rorschach test (he really is aptly named). (And it’s why it’s more often fascists/conservatives wildly misinterpreting leftist media. People are more likely to come with a conservative perspective than vice versa bc conservatism is, by its definition, the norm. Though this does still happen on more progressive sides e.g. TJLC.) They didn't see or chose not to see the irony.

Cue the Reddit dudebros misinterpreting Disco Elysium as pro centrist or “all ideologies are equally bad" and the INSANE 'you have to have a high IQ...' 'rick is good and objectively correct' Rick and Morty fans.

ID Two screenshots. One of the infamous "To Be Fair, You Have To Have a Very High IQ to Understand Rick and Morty" copypasta. One of a Disco Elysium Reddit post titled "Disco Elysium is Not Politically In Favor Of Any Ideology." End ID

Speaking of Rick and Morty fans, this is what I mean by the idea that Don Quixote is more like Rick's fans than he is like Rick. Much like the way Don un-self-aware-ly misinterprets his satirical reality for the chivalric romance of his favorite novels, so too do Rick and Morty fans un-self-aware-ly misinterpret Rick's nihilist satire on the sitcom for what is cool and good to do in real life. Plus, I can totally see these type of dudes unironically saying "Milady" to keep chivalry alive. But, there's one level further to this, beyond even seeing the irony, which I call the 'he's just like me fr' guys.

Now, in the case of the 'he's just like me fr' guys, it's not that they're mistaking the satire for sincerity—they totally understand that Patrick Bateman is a satirical take on Yuppie 'grind till you make it alpha' culture.

They're doing a secret third thing—meta irony—where they understand that Patrick Bateman is meant to be bad but act like they're un-self-aware and missed the irony anyway.

It's supposed to be a joke, buuuuut it's a joke the same way people will say "SLAY!" as a joke until it's unironically a part of their vocabulary. The ambiguity is key.

I'd argue that the dreamer Quixote approach is an application of 'he's just like me fr' view to Don Quixote, where he's 'a Chad rejecting reality in favor of the perseverance of man's whimsy' to some people, even as they joke that he's delusional ("Literally me (I'm mentally insane)").

Don Quixote certainly isn't doing it on purpose—again, he's un-self-aware, and he even got bullied out of it in part 2 (which admittedly I haven't read). Yet, there's a genuine sadness there of a man with such a penchant for adventure getting bullied that makes you wanna start humoring him.

It's ironic but not: Meta irony.

ID A screenshot of Jreg's "Post-Irony, Meta-Irony, and Post-Truth Satire (Video)" thumbnail. End ID

But yeah, meta irony is all fine and dandy when it's about slaying, but when it's about emulating the patriarchal psychopath, Patrick Bateman, or using edge-y humor to spread alt-right talking points, you start to wonder if there can be something insidious to the 'he's just like me fr' approach.

To put it best, the wild popularity of the Dreamer Don Quixote interpretation feels like the result of USAmerican 'grind till you make it' 'individual exceptionalism' 'it would suck for you, but i'm built different' values distorting the absurdity of being a reality denying dreamer, the same way we struggle to understand the Starship Troopers because it just feels normal/celebratory to us.

Don Quixote

So I think Don Quixote resonates strongest, for me, in the way it boldly states that reality is beautiful and worth living in without needing the opium of escapist fantasy.

For one, Cervantes is a rare ye olden feminist king who takes the time to point out that one man's escapist chivalric masculine fantasy is another woman's misogynistic reality.

To demonstrate, he has many examples of female characters telling off men for projecting romantic fantasies on them, but a more relevant way is how he writes Don Quixote as literally renaming some random woman he's never met 'Dulcinea' because he's decided she is his Lady he's given his eternal servitude to.

He renames her Dulcinea because it's "a name, to his mind, musical, uncommon, and significant, like all those he had already bestowed upon himself and the things belonging to him."

Which is PEAK satire of the misogynistic objectification of chivalry. If only the Rick and Morty "Milady" stans had the self-awareness this book had 400 years ago.

(Sidebar, but does anybody else think Don Quixote would make an absolutely killer Drag King persona? Don Queerote... Plus the ballet about him would help with the pre-existing choreo/music. Just a thought!)

But on another level, Don Quixote is full of interesting characters or stories outside of the chivalric knight conceit!

ID Pen illustrations (aka engravings by Gustave Dore) of two events happening simultaneously at the same inn in Don Quixote. The one above is of Don's assault on the wineskins in his sleep. The one below is of the reunion of Dorotea, Luscinda, Cardenio, and Fernando in the inn. End ID

People often clown on the novel for having so much time dedicated to the soap opera antics of side characters totally unrelated to the knight plot, but their antics being outside of Quixote's chivalric view emphasizes how life is interesting even when you're not following a delusional knight lifestyle!

Romance and reunions and betrayals that Don never really understands because he's too busy fighting windmills and wineskins! Yes, the delusion allowed him to go out and explore the world, but there's something so silly and sad about missing whimsy of real life in favor of living in escapist Knight Fanfiction. Reading about Cervantes's soap-opera-worthy life only reinforces this whimsy for reality and touching grass.

The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois

Preface: My main experience is JRPGs, not so much other Western RPGs and tabletop games. So although I’m saying it’s a satire of these tropes, and I noticed a lot of these things as ‘satire’ and 'parody,' I’m not totally enmeshed in the subculture the creators were going for, so I might need some corrections. 

Finally, this transitions into the deal with Harry! It's fascinating to me to think about how satire is used as the 'touch grass' or 'be fucking for real' genre. Oftentimes it's making fun of tropes/conventions by humorously contrasting them with reality—so how does this play out with the RPG!?

Weeellll, it goes hand in hand with the idea of RPGs as escapist power fantasy. RPGs are often thought of as the ultimate self-insert fantasy by its detractors or worst players, ahem looking at all those DND horror stories about entitled mangsty murderhobos.

One of the most infamous criticisms of Disco Elysium is its lackluster combat.

ID A screenshot of a random forum discussion post by dungeon master Zed Duke of Banville. It reads: "Disco Elysium has neither combat nor exploration, and therefore is missing two of the three fundamental components (or sets of components) that define the RPG genre." End ID

The game has essentially bordered off your ability to make Harry into a power fantasy murderhobo because you just are physically unable to equip an longsword or cuisse to murder your average citizen on the street of Martinaise.

But even on a less mangsty level, it subverts a lot of the basic expectations of RPGs.

Like the encounter with the racist lorry driver! You never get the ability or quest to change his mind, you only choose how you react to him.

Where other RPGs might let you act as the white savior or the white knight of chivalric romance, no questions asked, you're changing the minds of everybody who's wrong so we can all get along, Disco Elysium really makes you confront your ability to whiteknight, makes you confront if whiteknighting is even helpful, and why you wanted to whiteknight in the first place.

It’s part of the fun/humor experience of Disco Elysium that you at first expect to solve the world’s problems with a couple quests and lines of ‘good’ dialogue and then get socked in the faced with the fact that yeah, you can’t do much, you’re one person, what did you expect, asshole? Cuno doesn't fucking care!

ID a screenshot of Disco Elysium dialogue YOU - "Don't call it a dump, you've made it nice and cosy here." NOVELTY DICEMAKER - "Yeah." She stares out of the window, not really hearing your words. "Or maybe it's the entire world that's cursed? It's such a precarious place. Nothing ever works out the way you wanted." "That's why people like role-playing games. You can be whoever you want to be. You can try again. Still, there's something inherently violent even about dice rolls." "It's like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternative ending, or an entirely different world...." She picks up a pair of dice from the table and examines them under the light. End ID

Like, Neha is highlighting this little meta element of how you can stack your Harry in any RPG to pursue a certain ending or situation, but the actual outcome is still influenced by a dice roll out of your control.

A lot of the satirical humor in Disco Elysium comes from the absurdity that you can do everything right or everything wrong, and the dice can still fuck it up or save it for you—not just for things like high-fantasy attacks, but mundane things like remembering your name.

The dice are, at their core, about how RPGs aren't just for the control fantasy, of winning high-fantasy battles, but also can represent life as it is, mundane and uncontrollable.

Similarly, Harry is clearly written—complete with all the 'lore' that this would entail—to couch his RPG protagonist nature in the real.

If RPG characters are blank slates? Let's give ours amnesia! Need fast travel?! Kim teases the 41st Precinct for constantly running everywhere by calling it the Jamrock Shuffle. He needs to have deep and intimate conversations with everyone, even when they're strangers? Yeah, that's so weird we gave him the name 'Human Can-Opener,' and everybody remarks on his uncanny manipulation skills.

It's commenting on difference between controlling an RPG avatar and navigating in a human body.

As Kurvits said: “In reality we do not have control, or complete control, of our minds. Just like our body, it is something that we give-not even commands wishes to, and we hope it's gonna do it. We hope it's not gonna break down, we hope it's not gonna rebel against us.”

In one type of RPG fantasy, we don't even question our total control and even assume the joy is from the control. But in Disco Elysium, we lack control and find joy in it anyway. That is the fun of the game making us, the players, 'self-aware' about its RPG elements, and it especially resonates with anybody not able-bodied, anybody neurodivergent.

Harry Du Bois and Self-Awareness: Copotypes? More like Cope-otypes.

So that's on Disco Elysium and being aware of RPG elements in general, but let's deep dive into Harry and his Copotypes and political alignments like the OP!

I kind of want to round this last one out with what this all means. WHY am I, and others, linking self-awareness and satire? What's the link here?

Irony is one of the major tools of satirical writing, and there's always a little irony in being self-aware and doing it anyway, I think. It's specifically that Meta-Ironic element/Lampshading that is so rich for Touch-Grass satire because it parallels the futility/irony of self-awareness in real life.

The copotypes work this way.

ID A screenshot of a youtube comment. @jbeast3385 "Harry fundamentally takes on extreme interpretations of every ideology in the game as a coping mechanism for the tragedy that is his life, and it's amazing to see the amount of care given to extending an understanding of why each ideology appeals to his fractured mind. Each quest makes him something of a Don Quixote, searching for a purer purpose through political thought, failing spectacularly with it, but still fundamentally developing him and inspiring others beside him." End ID

The copotypes and the political alignments are a parody of classes and moral alignments. Rather than being a knight or a wizard, you're a superstarcop or a sorrycop! They don't do much, like there are no fireballs for an art cop, but they do poke fun at the ways the player is choosing to play Harry! Instead of chaotic good or neutral evil, you can be a communard or an ultralib! Which both involve spouting hilariously inappropriate talking points to the other citizens of Revachol.

What's fascinating, as @fagcrisis of this post says, is that these alignments are statements of how your Harry copes with the real world and the past/how he justifies what he does.

From the Solution to the Boring Cop Thought:

When someone says something political, the first three thoughts in your head are a ludicrous hodgepodge of communism, fascism and stock tips. When they ask you why you did something, it's superstardom, apocalypse, or the *mea culpas* of a flagellant cop monk

You start off making some choices based on the limited dialogue options of Harry's bizarre personality. If you play it like any other RPG power fantasy, BAM, the game hits you with the "Regular Law Official" thought, and you're labeled "Boring Cop." Or if you're apologizing to get the 'good' route, BAM, the game hits you with the "Rigorous Self-Critique" thought, and you're labelled "Sorry Cop!"

The game makes you 'aware' of your playing style, a little poke to say 'Stop being so scared of failures! You're boring! Sorry is not enough! Stop trying to be 'lawful good' (ACAB) and be a human!'

From the same Solution:

It's not easy, reaching for the fourth option -- the normal one. But you have. And now you're not *just* crazy, you're also *boring*.

Some people get this taste of self-awareness and fully embrace diving into the deep end of the game—Disco baby! Others lean into the sorry/boring/moralist cop in an ironic 'self-aware' sort of way—like the technique of Lampshading, since we're our own writers as RPG players.

But on a Harry level, it's also about HIM becoming self-aware of his habits, of internalizing these thoughts about his actions, his past, his coping mechanisms.

Seeking either “sweet oblivion” or to become “a different kind of animal,” many of the possible roleplaying choices are rooted in his desire to forget, evade or reframe the past. Whether self-destruction through drug abuse, fantasies of superstardom or visions of impending doom; it’s all in the service of not wanting to face the past, and the disastrous effects Harry’s continuous failure to do so has had on his life. - Vice

As the @fagcrisis of this post noted, Dora pretty much ALWAYS mentions the way Harry escapes reality by thinking of himself as an archetype, like other people are NPCs in an RPG. "like hes a self aware character but in the shitty way where him knowing he is a character and him acting like it only makes it worse because there isnt a story to escape from, he just cant cope with the real world" He's pulling a meta-ironic ''he's just like me fr" with Guillaume Le Million (who hangs himself) and superstardom the way "he's just like me fr" guys do it for Ryan Gosling.

And each copotype and political alignment are an opportunity to satirically critique the flaws and failures of each coping mechanism.

Cope-otype: Fascism

"Fascism, being marked, according to Paxton, by a need to compensate for humiliation, promises easy solutions to someone like Harry. It’s a crutch to prop up threatened masculinity, a rhetoric to shift blame for personal failings to ominous outside forces." - Vice

This game's satirical take on fascism is sort of perfect, literally making it about the lower intestines, 'gut instinct,' and bullshit (@spilledkaleidoscope). To be frank, fascists are 'full of shit,' and the vision quest highlights the way fascism isn't about a coherent ideology like 'returning to the past,' but rather it's a hodgepodge of SHIT thrown together to prop up hurt ego, threatened masculinity, of giving an easy scape-goated answer to the question of how Harry's supposed to face his past and his future.

The answer? He shoots it.

It's accurate in a way that doesn't reinforce the 'cool' aesthetics and pageantry fascism is obsessed with, what with literally calling fascists full of shit and all. Kim notices your change in expression, your stoic 'noble suffering' fascist face, and immediately calls it constipated. Bless.

Yet, even as Kim calls you out, even as you're aware of fascism's failures, how it destroys you ala Harry Du Bois -> Detective Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau, Fascist!Harry still believes because he can't face a wounded ego.

Cope-otype: Ultralib

Ultralibs on the other hand? I think it's telling that Idiot Doom Spiral is basically ultralib Harry's foil and a major questline NPC—the one who gives you Tequila Sunset.

Even the names are foils. Idiot Doom Spiral names himself that way to romanticize it, to make it into a marketable story, "but it keeps him in this state too, like a vicious cycle. The name ‘George’ is a name that still connects him to humanity," while Idiot Doom Spiral is a way to 'accept his place' even though it's miserable and keeps him from doing something about it, nor connect with other people, as @kindaeccentric put it in this post.

Similarly, the megarich light bending guy in the UltraLib quest LITERALLY is much more unlikely to connect with poorer people because the Rougon-Macquart coefficient literally dictates that we cannot see the richest people because their networth bends the light around them. It's an inversion of the way rich people are ignorant to poverty in real life, and here's a really good fic that covers this coefficient!

Finally, this mirrors Tequila Sunset as a name as well, the way it's a cope for hating himself. Instead of being miserable, he glorifies his misery by calling himself a funky, disco drink name, even as it symbolizes being washed up or even symbolizes the pale swallowing all, depending on how you play him (@palin-tropos).

So much of the ultralib plotline is about adding value — whether by sprucing yourself up with a new name like Tequila or Idiot or by 're-conceptualization' — through stuff like grind/hustle culture. An obsession with increasing networth but also 'giving back' to the community, as philanthropists put it.

But the satire of the ultralib vision quest is highlighting how hollow 'adding value' is, how much of it's just competition for wealth for the sake of wealth with no real meaningful answer or value.

ID Two screenshots of the game Disco Elysium. The first is of the horseback monument as it is. A matrix of cables and ropes isolate the fragmented bits in thin air. The second is described as this through in-game dialogue: HORSEBACK MONUMENT - The scaffolding around the old monument has been taken down, In its place are the spoils of your investment. Numerous rods and ropes still hold the original reassemblage in place. YOU- Reflect on the re-conceptualization. HORSEBACK MONUMENT - An apricot sceptre shines party-bright across the monument. Glitter balls dangle like severed heads below the eternal king of disco. It is unmistakably a vision of you in your prime -- a killer on the performance floor, icon for all. End ID

It's 'reconceptualizing' the Horseback Monument — the symbol of both the bombing of the revolution and the enduring of spirit the communards anyways, the way they've built a monument to freeze in time the moment of the profligate king being blown up — by building it in your own image. The fact that to do so you need to exploit the labor of an artist so you can make a profit, and it doesn't truly 'give back' to the community in any way. In fact, it's almost the opposite, like you've ruined the community monument by painting yourself AS THE KING.

It's why even Harry admits that "You're just insane, insane and gone. Even six billion won't fix you if she’s not there." Each copotype and political ideology contends with their own version of this as Harry learns to grow and face his past head on.

The Marriage of Fictional Conventions and Real Human Psychology

In the end, you can't just lean into an ideology or an archetype and hope that it'll answer all you problems.

But more than that — being self-aware about your issues doesn't solve anything either, no more than lampshading "fixes" any problems with your TV show.

It is this parallel between what Harry learns as he progresses and what the player learns as they progress that makes us empathize/resonate with Harry.

From acting erratically, then realizing it's part of an ideology, self-awarely adopting an ideology, to seeing how it fails and learning not to hide behind it. From "He's a blank slate so I can project my power fantasy onto him," then "I don't actually have a lot of power or control here," to "He's not just my RPG character, he's a person."

He's becoming a person, twice over.

It's ludonarrative resonance or consistency. A marriage of literary convention and real human psychology, on two scales.

And this resonance demonstrates why this genre of self-aware pastiche character is so popular: At it's best, you're forced to contend with the characters as fully realized people, paradoxically because they highlight the difference between fictional conventions and reality.

By acknowledging and poking fun of the fictional conventions, Harry Du Bois, Don Quixote, and Rick Sanchez feel more real to us.

And their stories come packaged with rich themes about dangers of disconnecting yourself from reality and the short distance 'self-awareness' alone can take you, which will resonate with almost every one of us here on the Internet. At least, I know it resonated with me.

BONUS:

Shen Yuan from Scum Villain Self-Saving System (@whetstonefires) also fits this list!!!!!!

[bigbroadvice]

Is it possible to be pan but have a preference of gender/“see” gender? I just learned about pan vs Omni and I guess Omni fits better but I love the pan flag and colors and more people know about it. Idk it’s a little confusing

Alright, getting on my etymological soap box here.

The point of words is to communicate ideas. They work based off shared understandings that shift through time and between cultures. Most people do not fit entirely into the definition of one word because words are simplifications of concepts and people are complex. Specialized terminology can be a useful shorthand so you don’t have to spend a couple paragraphs describing all the intricacies of a concept every time, but they’re never going to be absolutely completely accurate all the time. Like when you call something ‘red.’ Yeah, it’s pretty much garrenteed whatever it is is not entirely red, it’s probably got some orange or purple or whatever else hues in it, and even those are just categories made up by humans anyways. But calling it red is a workable enough simplification so other people get the gist of what you’re talking about.

If you want to describe yourself as pansexual because it gets the basic idea across to most people, that perfectly fine. If you want to clerify by using the word omnisexual around people who would understand the difference, that’s great too. If you’d rather not, that’s also fine. Nobody is entitled to the complete description of all your feelings and experiences. If them understanding you as pansexual works just fine for you, then go ahead and use that word.

There’s always going to be more precise and accurate microlabels. You can use those if you like, or you can choose not too. Most of the time the way I describe myself is simply “queer as fuck” because it gets the general idea across and I have fun saying it 😎 When I want to be a little more specific I say pan because it lets people know I like everybody. I also percieve gender though, so maybe it’d be a more accurate to describe myself as omnisexual? But I also don’t think the ways I experience attraction are exactly the same as other people so maybe it really ought to be greyomniace? Is that even a word? (Trick question, of course it’s a word cuz I just used it as one and that’s all words are, sounds we string together to represent ideas) I could probably go down the rabbit trail of a hundred different sub labels if I really wanted to get precise about it, but I don’t really care to, and that’s fine. I’ve got a good enough understanding of me, and the terms I use give other people a good enough understanding. Purpose accomplished.

[aeroplanestouchthesky]

Major umineko spoilers, don't read if you're not past ep 7

I feel weird with how often Shannon is depicted as the de-facto "face" of Sayo. It feels rare to see depictions of the "trick version of the culprit" as someone besides Shannon-without-huge-breasts.

Even using the name Sayo and _never_ Yoshiya feels strange. I know the manga makes a bigger deal (has Sayo in the Beatrice dress introduce herself as "Yasuda Sayo"), but the VN only has her say that she hates being called Yasu, right? Or did I forget?

Obviously, Sayo picking the name to give to George is important, but I've always interpreted the fact that Yoshiya gives a different name to Jessica as an indication that those of the names of the furniture that became "human". "Sayo" is not a more "prime" name for the whole rather than "Yoshiya."

While we're here, I feel like there's a simplification of "as kids, shannon fell in love with Battler and visa versa" that just...doesn't sit well. Idk it feel like a lot of the terminology used misses the whole point of the fragmentation.

[occasionaltouhou]

What are Kanako and Suwako's insanity levels/style among kami?

now, when considering this question, part of you is going to want to say they're normal, because they act fairly human. this is a trick. they're both at least on okina's level as far as selfish whims, with some variation on how much interest they have in individual humans. their whims just tend to be expressed via construction work

anyway it takes a special kind of personality to look at late-stage capitalism and go "I wanna remake this, but with me on top this time" (NOTE: THIS IS A COMEDIC SIMPLIFICATION OF KANAKO'S GOALS)

[rexshadaoart]

"I am Oz... the great and... terrible... But don’t strike me! P-please... don’t... I’ll do anything you want me to!"

Behold! The man behind the curtain. The supposed great and powerful Wizard of Oz... is nothing more than an old humbug from Omaha, Nebraska.

Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs. Or OZ PINHEAD for short. We'll just call him Oscar Diggs because he ain't Oz (but he is a pinhead). As a bonus, here's him with his top hat:

Unlike other Oz characters I drew, I need no Moodboard reference to know exactly who to base Oscar Diggs on. PT Barnum, the original humbug.

I don't know if L. Frank Baum based Oscar Diggs on PT Barnum since there were other showmen like balloonist Washington Harrison Donaldson that fit the inspiration better.

But PT Barnum was known for being a hoaxer and a shameless showman. He's even known as the Prince of Humbugs and is attributed with the phrase "A sucker is born every minute", and this caricature cartoon I found fits better with Oscar Diggs' look in the books than Donaldson's handsome, mustache appearance. I want to make it clear that Oscar Diggs is not a dashing, charming rogue, but an old humbug who is meeker than Dorothy Gale.

Plus, Donaldson did work with Barnum, so I envision that Oscar Diggs did work with Barnum during his young career and used the skills he learned from the master showman to trick the Ozians into thinking he's a genuine wizard.

Anyways, I based Oscar's face on Barnum's caricature and gave him a little shave and the Wizard is described as a bald, old man. I also was reading Eric Shanower's graphic novel adaptation of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz and got a reminder that the acronym of Oscar Diggs' full name spells OZ PINHEAD, and the artwork of Oscar Diggs gives him a pinhead look not unlike Arnold Wesker from The New Batman Adventures. So, I did a little simplification of Oscar's face and somewhat straight his head and neck to look more like a pinhead while still maintaining the primary features on his giant head puppet (as it's supposed to be based on Oscar's head just exaggerated to be more god-like).

[dnaayan]

Importance of Functional Mathematics

Functional mathematics refers to the practical application of mathematical concepts in real-life situations. It focuses on developing problem-solving skills that help individuals manage everyday tasks, make informed decisions, and improve efficiency in personal, academic, and professional settings.

LEARN ABOUT EASY TIPS AND TRICKS FOR MATHS 👈.

Logarithmic Function

Form: f(x)=log⁡ax

Example: f(x)=log⁡2x

Common in simplifications, logarithm rules, and data analysis.

Absolute Value Function

Form: f(x)=∣x∣

Example: f(x)=∣x−3∣

Used in distance problems, inequalities, and piecewise functions.