#these three have similar philosophies on this question in a lot of ways

[runfromthemedic]

Danny Phantom adopts more kids than Bruce Wayne

I’ve seen a lot of fics going around about how Danny will get summoned as the Ghost King via cultist and dpxdc fics going around and I had an idea.

So Danny (ages 14-16 ish depending) gets summoned a lot, and in those summoning's there is usually a sacrifice. Normally, if the sacrifices are kidnapped adults and the like Danny beats up the cultist and just lets the sacrifices go.

But what happens when the sacrifices are younger?

A literal child gets offered up, a soul contract binding them to Danny (probably as a slave or food or whatever, I just think like John Constantine’s contracts but without the con). Danny still beats up the cultist but now he has a kid with a soul contract that he can’t break without severe backlash happening to the kid and there already pretty hurt form the cultist.

Panicking and worried about the kid, Danny seals the contract but with some adjustments, so now for all intent and purposes he now has a kid. 

Danny takes the kid back to the Far Frozen for Frostbite to heal, constantly sending calming emotions to his new kid while panic texting Sam and Tucker they had a kid now and spamming Jazz with questions on how to parent.

Many freak-outs and logistic family meetings later and they’ve worked out a relatively (more like half-way) decent plan for parenting. The kid is very happy with the new and loving parents and auntie and things calm down as much as things can with three liminal teenagers, a half-dead one, and a elementary schooler can between parenting, going to school, ghost king duties, and hiding all of this from Jack and Maddie. 

Danny cries the first time the tot called him Dad. Sam and Tucker record this for blackmail. Danny gets even when Sam and Tucker breakout the waterworks when they get called Mom and Pops.

And then a few months later another summoning happens, this time with a 17 year old. They get adopted.

Five months after that, another summoning, this time with two 12 year old's. They get adopted.

Thirteen months after that, another summoning. The kids 15. Adopted.

Two months after that, summoning and there’s three of them. All adopted.

By the time Danny, Sam, and Tucker are about to hit college age they have thirteen kids give or take.  All of them call the Trio Dad, Mom, and Pops. Doesn’t matter if some of the kids are older. Team Phantom are the best parents most of them have ever had. Age is blatantly ignored in most situations. Dani is considered the oldest. The first adopted kid is considered the second oldest, etc.

Danny’s castle in the Infinite Realms has a room for all of this kids and portals going out into different dimensions depending on where the summoning happened. The Trio didn’t want to completely uproot any of their kids lives so they make sure all of the kids have the right records, access to schooling, etc. 

Cue two of the kids (maybe three if you want John Constantine drunkenly auctioning off his at the time non-existent first born, accidents happen, the whole hodgepodge family has a understanding to punch Constantine on sight if they ever see him on their siblings/sons behalf) being from the DC universe.

Older of the two goes to Gotham U (I think studying communications, politics, philosophy etc to be able to help Danny with his Ghost Kind Duties) and the younger getting a scholarship to the fancy rich kid school Damian attends. 

Danny’s kids are about as liminal as they can get between the adoption contract, all of the ectoplasm exposure, and the kids all living in the Infinite Realms the majority of the time. Damian and the younger get along like a house on fire be cause they have similar interest based on life. I think the older sibling somehow befriends Tim Drake, Tim possible develops a crush.

Batman is very paranoid about the two possibly metas around his kids

[deargodsno]

Two thousand years ago, a volcanic eruption buried an ancient library of papyrus scrolls now known as the Herculaneum Papyri. In the 18th century the scrolls were discovered. More than 800 of them are now stored in a library in Naples, Italy; these lumps of carbonized ash cannot be opened without severely damaging them. But how can we read them if they remain rolled up? On March 15th, 2023, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Brent Seales launched the Vesuvius Challenge to answer this question. Scrolls from the Institut de France were imaged at the Diamond Light Source particle accelerator near Oxford. We released these high-resolution CT scans of the scrolls, and we offered more than $1M in prizes, put forward by many generous donors. A global community of competitors and collaborators assembled to crack the problem with computer vision, machine learning, and hard work. Less than a year later, in December 2023, they succeeded. Finally, after 275 years, we can begin to read the scrolls. Grand Prize​ There was one submission that stood out clearly from the rest. Working independently, each member of our team of papyrologists recovered more text from this submission than any other. Remarkably, the entry achieved the criteria we set when announcing the Vesuvius Challenge in March: 4 passages of 140 characters each, with at least 85% of characters recoverable. This was not a given: most of us on the organizing team assigned a less than 30% probability of success when we announced these criteria! And in addition, the submission includes another 11 (!) columns of text — more than 2000 characters total. The results of this review were clear and unanimous: the Vesuvius Challenge Grand Prize of $700,000 is awarded to a team of three for their excellent submission. Congratulations to Youssef Nader, Luke Farritor, and Julian Schilliger! Runners up​ Of the remaining submissions, the scores from our team of papyrologists identify a three-way tie for runner up. These entries show remarkably similar readability to each other, but still stand out from the rest by being significantly more readable. Congratulations to the following teams, each taking home $50,000! Shao-Qian Mah. GitHub Elian Rafael Dal Prá, Sean Johnson, Leonardo Scabini, Raí Fernando Dal Prá, João Vitor Brentigani Torezan, Daniel Baldin Franceschini, Bruno Pereira Kellm, Marcelo Soccol Gris, and Odemir Martinez Bruno. GitHub Louis Schlessinger and Arefeh Sherafati. GitHub

What does the scroll say?​ To date, our efforts have managed to unroll and read about 5% of the first scroll. Our eminent team of papyrologists has been hard at work and has achieved a preliminary transcription of all the revealed columns. We now know that this scroll is not a duplicate of an existing work; it contains never-before-seen text from antiquity. The papyrology team are preparing to deliver a comprehensive study as soon as they can. You all gave them a lot of work to do! Initial readings already provide glimpses into this philosophical text. From our scholars: The general subject of the text is pleasure, which, properly understood, is the highest good in Epicurean philosophy. In these two snippets from two consecutive columns of the scroll, the author is concerned with whether and how the availability of goods, such as food, can affect the pleasure which they provide. Do things that are available in lesser quantities afford more pleasure than those available in abundance? Our author thinks not: “as too in the case of food, we do not right away believe things that are scarce to be absolutely more pleasant than those which are abundant.” However, is it easier for us naturally to do without things that are plentiful? “Such questions will be considered frequently.” Since this is the end of a scroll, this phrasing may suggest that more is coming in subsequent books of the same work. At the beginning of the first text, a certain Xenophantos is mentioned, perhaps the same man — presumably a musician — also mentioned by Philodemus in his work On Music. Richard Janko writes: “Is the author Epicurus' follower, the philosopher and poet Philodemus, the teacher of Vergil? It seems very likely. Is he writing about the effect of music on the hearer, and comparing it to other pleasures like those of food and drink? Quite probably. Does this text come from his four-part treatise on music, of which we know Book 4? Quite possibly: the title should soon become available to read. Is the Xenophantus who is mentioned the celebrated flute-player, or the man famous in antiquity for being unable to control his laughter, or someone else entirely? So many questions! But improvements to the identification of the ink, which can be expected, will soon answer most of them. I can hardly wait.” Scholars might call it a philosophical treatise. But it seems familiar to us, and we can’t escape the feeling that the first text we’ve uncovered is a 2000-year-old blog post about how to enjoy life. Is Philodemus throwing shade at the stoics in his closing paragraph, asserting that stoicism is an incomplete philosophy because it has “nothing to say about pleasure?” The questions he seems to discuss — life’s pleasures and what makes life worth living — are still on our minds today. We can expect many more works from Philodemus in the current collection, once we’re able to scale up this technique. But there could be other text as well — an Aristotle dialog, a lost history of Livy, a lost Homeric epic work, a poem from Sappho — who knows what treasures are hidden in these lumps of ash.

[guapoduoshipper]

Our position on recent events

First of all we would like to start this message expressing our solidarity with all the administrators who worked or are still working on the whole project that QSMP represents. We wish you the best today and always.

QSMP has been a project that has given us a lot of joy so, as is normal, this situation makes us feel scared, confused but, above all, very sad. It is unfortunate that a project full of such good intentions should take the course we have witnessed and that with each passing moment it only seems to fade away more and more.

This blog came to life by loving the whole atmosphere that the QSMP created and thanks to which the characters of cc!Roier and cc!Cellbit (and the CC theirselves) found each other. That even with the differences in culture and language they were able to build both their individual lores and the wonderful duo that captivated us.

The excellent work that the CCs put into this romantic representation created in us a deep passion that has been our muse in creating art (written or illustrated), writing analyses, taking screenshots and, of course, associating music in Portuguese, Spanish and English that helped us to give a letter and a voice to the feelings that we could perceive the cubitos have for each other.

It has been a passion that has meant a dedication in time, effort, creativity and organization of the three of us who manage this blog, who in each publication, in addition to everything already mentioned, have left our hearts. For all this we thank QSMP but, above all, Roier and Cellbit.

With these feelings in our hearts in JustAGuapoduoShipper, as a team, have made the following decisions:

Our blog has always been 100% Guapoduo/Spiderbit so in that aspect there will be no changes. The difference will be mainly that the cubitos: c!Roier, c!Cellbit, as well as their children: Bobby, Richarlyson and Pepito will no longer be associated to the QSMP server but as OCs of the content creators.

We've decided to continue to create our content based on everything that during 9 months the CCs gave us and, probably, to create our own AUs with it.

Even though we still don't know the decision that Cellbit and Roier or Richas and Pepito's administrators will take, in this same statement of intentions we want to make clear that we respect and support it completely. So, with that in mind:

Potential future content will be used without mentioning QSMP, they will still be OCs in their own lore or universe.

If the Cellbit and Roier cubitos meet again on another Minecraft server (e.g. special events), we would like to use that material as AU. We will not take the interactions out of context. We will only take screenshots.

We would love for the content creators to grant us some closure worthy of their amazing characters and their role as a couple on an external server with the support of the admins of Richas and Pepito (and secretly pray that they do) but, if it doesn't happen, we invite you not to pressure either of them and respect their decisions.

Before we finish, we want to address all the artist fans of Guapoduo/Spiderbit and say that if you decide to take a similar way to ours: we will still continue to share your art on our blog. We understand that it is a difficult situation, even painful, but the great effort that Cellbit and Roier put into their individual and joint stories still deserve all the love and effort. On the other hand, those who decide to completely separate themselves from the community: we understand your position, we respect it without any question and we wish you the absolute best for your success as such talented people certainly deserve it.

We have made clear more than once, and will continue to reiterate as many times as necessary, our philosophy of creating and maintaining a safe space for the entire Guapoduo/Guapofamily/Spiderbit community. We want to continue to be that place where you can find a distraction, a material provided with all the love in order to forget for a moment of the problems that may be afflicting you, no matter how big or small they may be, everyone deserves a break. As a multicultural community we know perfectly well that among us there are minorities, lgbtq+ and neurodivergent people, it is for all of them that we have taken this decision with the greatest possible care and respect.

Last but not least, we reiterate our immense love, understanding and support for the QSMP administration, you deserve better and we hope you receive it. Our private messages remain open for anyone who needs clarification or a more individual message.

Truly yours:

Lyn, Feh and M

Disclaimer:

We do not wish under any circumstances that this statement be used to send hatred to Quackity, the QSMP or the CCs that decide to continue in the project.

We deeply love and respect Quackity and don't forget that he was also a victim of people who took advantage of his good faith and trust to embezzle funds and abuse people; but it is certainly urgent that the community, but especially the administrators and content creators, receive a strong statement from him.

We want wholeheartedly that the project gets up and manages to demonstrate integral structural changes and we do not rule out a reintegration of our content under its name but, meanwhile, our commitment to the community is to keep it free of toxic and non-transparent spaces.

[legend-as-old-as-time]

Bionicle AU

I've been thinking about an AU where Nokama is the Toa Metru's leader during the Metru Nui era.

Which is compelling - and difficult - because she shows no interest in leading in canon. There's some subtext that can indicate that she avoids doing so. On the other hand, Vakama regularly and confidently acts as leader and makes decisions for the team.

What do I need to tweak that she steps up as a leader despite her wishes otherwise? How does this change things, both because she's leader and because of the changes themselves? How do I keep her and the others in character?

Things need to change with this to be meaningful as a story. How far do I want the changes in events to go, though? I still want the Toa Metru to save the matoran, go through the Hordika saga, and have Time Trap but that is far away.

First idea: Nokama keeps her unwillingness to lead, but she believes that it is she who needs to step up.

Maybe Lhikan said something differently to her.

Maybe he visited the matoran in a different order. Krekka and Nidhiki ambushed him at Nokama's place but he could flee to Vakama's forge, where the two Dark Hunters still captured him by taking him hostage. She wouldn't react the same way as Vakama, but maybe her guilt makes her feel that if she acted more decisively, she could have helped him. I'm still working on this idea.

Maybe Teridax was a more proactive. Decided that he'd sow some seeds of discords among his 'pawns'. He set something up that made her believe that she needs to be the one to lead.

Maybe it was a mix of several factors.

---

Second idea: She and Vakama as well as Onewa come into conflict because of that.

Vakama, because unlike his occasional early claims that somebody else should do it, still makes decisions. She struggles with her desire to mentor and push off the leader position to him, which conflicts with her belief that she needs to lead. They also have similar high ideals about what a toa should be like.

Onewa, because he clashes with both of the others because of their similarities. Vakama shares his stubborness and strategic thinking. Nokama shares his ego and thinking he knows better than all of the others.

All three of them have a specific idea how things should go and have to learn how to compromise. Onewa also thinks at first that they used to be pampered matoran who don't know what 'real life' is like.

---

Third idea: Team dynamics shift significantly in some ways while they stay the same to canon in others. I'm only focusing on general dynamics between Nokama and each Toa Metru for now. I assume that all of them resolve some (but not all!) tensions at the ending of the Metru Nui saga and become good friends.

Nuju supports her shortly after the Toa Metru form and often listens to orders with little pushback. She asks for his counsel a lot and talks philosophy with him for fun / to distract herself.

She's most comfortable confiding in him about her fears and insecurities, but her need to appear in control / not worrying makes her withdraw the longer they are toa. His lack of practical / life knowledge worries her.

-

She and Onewa are on much tenser terms because of their conflict as leaders plus their respective biases about po-matoran and ga-matoran / their jobs. She hates how he make her angry because it makes her feel out of control.

This feeling heightens because she recognizes he's a better strategist than her so she grudgingly listens to him.

-

The relationship with Vakama starts as fond. It stays that way for some days / weeks, with some hiccups because of leadership clashes. She prefers strategizing with him. She believes his visions are true and takes them as cues.

Mounting stress, trauma, and feelings of guilt make their brittle go brittle until it blows up before or during the Hordika arc.

-

Matau drops the flirting much earlier because she demands it. He acknowledges her as his leader, and isn't afraid to question her decisions when he thinks it's necessary.

Nokama here feels more uncomfortable at being questioned. Their interactions are more seriously earlier because of that. He still crushes on her, although it might mature earlier or later, or might fade.

-

Like with Nuju, she often asks Whenua for counsel. She doesn't have the same easy rapport with him as with Nuju but she enjoys the good-natured bickering about different topics with him.

Plus, Whenua knows about things she hasn't even heard about. The same makes her feel inferior about her own knowledge when he corrects her on things.

[zbloodwhisper]

i have no idea if this is a popular theory or not but.. i have a theory that idrilla is missing because they were absorbed by another aeon.. specifically xipe, the harmony

you see, i came up with this theory about two weeks ago, when i was studying for a exam (im a philosophy major, i feel like it's important to disclose because i notice that starrail takes some elements from philosophy; the most obvious one being nous the erudition, i can write more about that another time), and during my studies i was reading about beauty and the meaning of beauty in philosophy. now, when i was studying, the beauty was regarding art (the class was philosophy of the arts), but i am sure it can be applied to beauty in general.

the guy i was reading about is Kant, so, in his line of thinking is that beauty is related to the way the object in question makes you feel, mostly described as a calming effect, or the internal feeling of harmony. now, it's been two weeks and my adhd ass doesn't remember the details and is probably making it less nuanced that it is, but the main idea is there. beauty has already been associated with harmony by philosophers.

now, with that in mind, we already know xipe has absorbed another aeon before, ena the order, because their concepts were pretty similar. and because ena and xipe fused, you can see some elements of them in xipes desing.

such elements as similar colors, the dark blue as the main color and gold details. as well as the galaxy that can be found both in the back of xipes dress and also the back of ena (unsure if its the back of the veil or something else). going of that, I'm pretty sure xipe also has elements of idrilla in their desing, that being the hair.

as can be seen in the argenti lightcone, idrilla ( i am 90% sure the figure argenti is looking at is supposed to be idrilla) has white hair. white hair that coincidentally xipe shares. outside the statue of idrilla that we have seen, i don't think there's anything else regarding their appearance, and the statue doesn't give me a lot to work with i believe.

also, last note on their appearance, xipe has three heads, which can be a nod to them being the fusion of three different aeons.

that is all the evidence i have for now that makes me believe idrilla has been absorbed by xipe, and just from that I am pretty convinced that is true. if anyone has any other thing that can serve as proof, or anything that disproves this theory for that matter, I'd love to hear it!!

[boopiddyboop]

Song Mingi Natal Chart Reading

I’m gonna be honest: I feel like I was all over the place with this one. I don’t know if I did him justice with this write up, but I tried my best. TT.TT

Full Disclaimer: Most of my knowledge is by traditional astrology, which involves but is not limited to: using whole signs, excluding Uranus-Pluto for natal charts, different sign rulers, and different planetary interpretations.  Astrology is subjective by nature; I do not think my way is best, simply that this is the version of interpretation that makes the most sense to me. This is not a professional service, simply a hobby meant for entertainment purposes only.  Feel free to disagree with or question my conclusions.

Placements:

Sun: Leo - 9th house

Moon: Cancer - 8th house

Mercury: Cancer - 8th house

Venus: Virgo - 10th house

Mars: Scorpio - 12th house

Jupiter: Taurus - 6th house

Saturn: Taurus - 6th house

Ascendant: Sagittarius

Midheaven: Libra - 11th house

North Node: Leo - 9th house

Okay, so the birth time is inexact for Mingi because his grandmother (or was it mother?) was superstitious about giving the exact time, and honestly? Smart woman. But, I “around 4 PM” makes him either a Sagittarius Rising or a Cap Rising and I think we can all agree that Mingi as a Capricorn rising is Not It (For comparison, Hongjoong is a Capricorn Rising, and while there are a few similarities between the two, I think it’s safe to say they give off very different vibes). So Sag it is! Making a very cute Jupiter in Taurus his chart ruler. But I don’t want to distract from the leading story of this chart which is NO AIR SIGNS IN THE NATAL PlANETS. NOT ONE. Home boy is emotions and vibes and intuition and instinct, but logic? Balance? No ma’am. Apparently, this is catnip to my air dominant self. Omnomnom.

(These gifs aren't super relevant to the last point, I just wanted to put them somewhere)

Now, before anyone comes at me for implying something about his intellect, I will shortly direct you to his Sun in Leo sitting pleasantly in the 9th house. The Sun in a sign it rules in the benefic house of higher learning, philosophy, travel, and foreign affairs. Especially in Leo, this makes him quite the curious soul. Alas, it is squaring both his Mars in Scorpio and Saturn in Taurus. We’ll jump back to Taurus first.

So, like San, Mingi has both his Jupiter and Saturn in Taurus (Jupiter changes signs about every 13 months, while Saturn sits in a sign for 2.5-3 years.), so it’s almost more surprising that between all the 99 liners, Mingi and San are the only two that share this. They’re not conjunct, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still fighting here. Jupiter For Mingi, this is in the 6th house- health and employment. So Jupiter is giving him growth and luck in this area, while Saturn brings restriction and strictness. So that’s…complicated. Directly, His Jupiter is squaring his Mercury in Cancer, a rather docile placement for Mercury, while making him have an artistic flair, can lead to him being all in/all out in decision making. His Saturn squares his Sun, which can bring him low self-esteem at times. On the plus side! That Jupiter helps balance that, and also trines his Venus in Virgo, making him quite congenial. Alas, Venus is in its fall sign in Virgo, making him over analyze his relationships, but with it being in the 10th house, it helps bring an artistic flavor to his work. May also benefit in his relationships helping his career.

On the flip side, we have Mingi and two signs in dignity. We’ve got the 3rd Mars in Scorpio of Ateez- I’ve spoken about this before, but of the three (Yunho, San, and Mingi), this is the one causing the most trouble. The 12th house is by nature malefic, and having the sign of fight here brings a lot of restlessness to Mingi. Difficulties expressing anger arise from this, and while his Moon in Cancer  is helping alleviate this with its trine aspect, it leads to him compromising more often than he wants. This Moon placement is already quite domestic, but when it’s in the 8th house, there’s probably a certain amount of safety that Mingi feels in reclusion. 

Usually when I do these write ups, I try to end with a TLDR of what the major points of the chart are, but I gotta say, Mingi’s is a bit all over the place? He’s got a lot of complexities, this guy. I’d say that when it’s good, it’s great for him, but when it rains, it pours. And naturally, that’s why I picked this one as my favorite. (Because I can’t be straightforward about anything JESUS CHRIST)

he's just a cutie ok

[whovianwatchingstartrek]

A Whovian Watches Star Trek for the First Time: Part 041 - Time And Relative Dimension In Space

Star Trek: Enterprise - Season 2 Episode 16 - Future Tense

In this episode the episode picked up a derelict pod and... while episode takes a while to get round to figuring out what this is, and it makes for a fun mystery, I'm just gonna say it here: It's a TARDIS! Bigger on the inside, Time Travel, slightly alive, the art designs on the ships interior walls look kinda Gallifreyan. It's a TARDIS. I don't care what the episode calls it, it's a TARDIS

At first they think it's some kind of weird escape pod or shuttle, but that theory doesn't add up, and they slowly piece together what this thing is over the course of the episode.

Trip and Malcom are left to study the TARDIS while Archer and T'Pol take the dead pilot to Phlox to try and get an identity out of it. The corpse is mostly human, with other bits of Alien DNA added in and notably, wearing a similar kind of uniform that Crewman Daniels was wearing in Shockwave, a nice hint at where the pilot really came from.

The TARDIS however, is lot more interesting. Firstly, they notice it has no propulsion system. Big mystery is: How did it get into space then? Next, they discover organic circuitry and then... well:

It's a delight getting Bigger on the Inside moments from the Enterprise Crew! I don't know if Dominic Keating grew up on Doctor Who, but Malcolm's reaction was Spot On.

They don't get much of a chance to explore, because the Suliban showed up and attacked in an attempt to take it, which definitely ties this into the whole Temporal Cold War thing, shadowy villain guy isn't seen, but it's 100% him who's after it. The Suliban incursion into Enterprise's launch bay was a fun action scene.

After the information about the ship and pilot are given to Archer, he decides it's important to check the database in Daniels' quarters, and they do find it's schematic. The episode calls it's engine "Temporal displacement drive".

Phlox with T'Pol had a delightful conversation about the nature of Time Travel and The Vulcan Science Directorate's rigid stance on the topic. Trip and Malcolm's conversation about knowing the future through time travel was also excellent.

Trip and Malcolm start attempting to reverse engineer the TARDIS, but kinda get stuck in a loop every time they start taking it apart. Kinda like that bit in City of Death where the Doctor and Romana stumble across a groove in time. I would share video of the scene, but I already used my one video for this post. Oh well.

I had a lot of fun with this episode. It had a good bit of philosophy and it raises a lot questions about the various factions in the Temporal Cold War, especially when we have the limit perspective of our Crew, I really want to know who the Thollians are working for. The actions scenes were excellent too! The three way space battle at the end was spectacular!

Also now that I know the future has proper actual TARDISes, I want to see crewman Daniels Photoshopped into Time Lord Robes. Stupid Collar and all.

[luminouslumity]

I wasn't going to make a Part Three to this, but I'm a history and myth nerd and I'm having way too much fun with these posts! Here's the first two parts for anyone who's seeing this just now.

As excited as I was to finally know LBD's backstory, I feel like there are still a lot of unanswered questions with regards to her, including how she even came to have influence over life in the first place if she was apparently able to bring Macaque back from the dead, unless she had a tool or already had a connection to the Underworld itself. If we follow the latter, with her at the very least having once been Meng Po's assistant and thus worked so closely with the dead, then her resentment towards the mortals makes even more sense if she was constantly surrounded by more than a few unsavory souls and her failure at trying to help a living one is what finally did it for her.

And keep in mind that reincarnation is often regarded as less of a reward and more of a punishment in the eyes of certain religions, including Buddhism (which JttW had of course been influenced by), so imagine being an overseer of souls in a way, constantly watching certain ones trying to do better and either failing in their next life or having to be reborn again regardless depending on what they did in a previous life, all while the world keeps getting worse and worse with each passing century. Even Tripitaka himself—as Jinchan Zi/Golden Cicada—had once been a disciple of Buddha before he too entered the Cycle as punishment for inattentiveness; by the time he becomes Sanzang, he'd already lived through ten previous lives.

Then there's also the Mandate of Heaven in general, a political philosophy that was used to legitimize the claim of a Chinese ruler, similar to the Divine Right of Kings in the West. And at least in the case of Investiture of the Gods (the book that features Nezha's origin story, I talk about it here), it's apparently literal in at least one instance since even the gods themselves were direct participants in bringing about the fall of the Shang Dynasty to make way for the Zhao. As a result, this could be why LBD apparently wanted to destroy Heaven as well if we assume she'd regarded the gods as being useless at best or no better than the mortals at worst.

Am I looking too deep into this? Yeah, probably. But all this history is exactly why this so much fun for me!

Also, white is the traditional color of mourning in China. LBD's outfit has black as well, which represents Heaven. But you know what else is black and white? The symbols Yin and Yang, almost as if LBD is considering herself to be the balance of the world (and considering her motives... yeah...). She also wears a bit of purple, which represents divinity and immortality, while gold signifies wealth and prosperity and was worn by emperors.

So yeah, as if she didn't think highly of herself already!

[themarginalthinker]

Hey there I have a question: do you think the boys would like celebrate any holidays or birthdays with each other? And if they did what would they do?

Good question! And one I've considered as well!

I think it's different for all of them, including Michael and even Star. It also largely depends on three things - how much they individually care, how old they are, and what exactly the holiday/event means to them. (Under readmore due to length lmao sorry -_-")

David: Turned in the early 1870s - The biggest holiday for him would likely be Christmas as he was some denomination of Christian (though if you asked him, he'd say with a roll of his eyes that he'd be in Hell purely for how little he actually attended church when he was alive). The custom of Halloween came over from Ireland and started to comebine with other fall celebrations into the fetus that would become what we today know as Halloween in about the 1840s with the immigrants coming from the potato famine, and David's parents were children when they immigrated, so he'd have some idea of that.

I think he still likes the idea of the holidays, but it's hit or miss whether he celebrates them any more. In a lot of ways, he sees them as a very human thing, and though he can still see the spirit of celebrating or commemorating the passage of time, certain points of the year like Equinoxes or Solstices (times of power), he may not do anything particularly special.

He also doesn't celebrate his birthday for similar reasons. He keeps a memory of it, but...any more, it's just to add another tally mark on the wall of his mind to count the years, the decades he's been alive.

Dwayne: Turned in 1900 - Dwayne doesn't tend to enjoy European holidays. Most of them are pretty well tied with religion, and given his history, and his outlook on most of humanity, he tends to avoid much of anything to do with them. Even if he was human, I think the sheer commercialism would drive him batshit up the belfry. And really, it's not limited to Christian celebrations either - the new age witchy stuff with Samhain, Yule, the Eight Major Wiccan holidays; even eastern religious stuff tends to put him off (though that's more for lack of familiarity and the similarities he sees in white people adopting the language of eastern philosophy but not actually understanding it feels much, MUCH too close to home.)

Dwayne will enjoy drinks at a party, but he won't really stick around for anything more. If you want to give him a gift or something, fine, but don't expect one back.

This attitude doesn't really change when Laddie comes into the picture, but Dwayne doesn't want to make him sad, so he lets the kid have fun with the others.

Dwayne does not know his birthday. I am unsure what cultural practices the Haida people of the western coast of Canada had in regards to birthdays or something akin to it, so I cannot write that for him, but regardless, because of what happened to him, Dwayne does not remember even what time of year his birthday was in. He counts the years like David does though, and just marks it at January 1st for convenience's sake.

Paul: Turned in 1956 - Paul does enjoy most of what we consider to be modern holidays! Paul came from a pretty religious family, mainline Protestant (his father was a pastor of their church), so he definitely celebrated the big ones, like Christmas and Easter. Now. Whether or not he liked them.....well. He likes them here and now. Paul enjoys candy, sweets of most kinds but especially candy. He likes the way the seasons bring different flavors with them - peppermint in winter even on the sunny west coast, chocolate at Halloween, popsicles in the sticky summer, and more recently - yes, he's that bitch - pumpkin spice in the fall. Oh, and drinking. Paul mainly celebrates with lots of indulgences of many kinds, and is always down for a party no matter what it is you're having it for.

Sometimes, though, you CAN catch him in an off moment, usually right after the holidays, or during ones like Easter or Christmas, where he won't. Really be in the mood. Paul doesn't 'come down' so to speak often, but when he does, he ends up hitting the proverbial floor of his emotions pretty hard. Sometimes, his past gets the better of him still, and seeing as his bane is being affected by holiness, it still hurts to pray, but that doesn't mean he won't do it - even if out of a sense of chasing the ghosts off his back.

Paul treats himself for his birthday, and when Marko came to the pack, of course he wanted to do something nice for Paul. Usually a little gift, or just saying 'whatever we do together tonight, happy birthday'. He keeps birthday trinkets from Marko especially close.

Marko: Turned 1980 - Marko is similar to Paul in a lot of respects. Even more modern, but oddly both more and less religious. We call Paul a 'good Protestant' and Marko a 'bad Catholic', and it's true. Marko's family did pretty much the whole nine yards, having come right over from Italy and then having their son. Marko's idea of holidays usually involved a lot of church, which wasn't...unfun? He had friends, but it wasn't ever the most exciting thing for a rambunctious kid to be doing. Marko likes summer and fall holidays the most, when it's basically just an excuse to eat a lot of food, drink and lot of drinks, and have fun.

He and Paul have a blast treating Laddie - they even went trick or treating with him the year that they had him, Marko having made Laddie a custom wolf mask and tail with a pelt that Dwayne had saved from a coyote. Star was. Well. She was impressed with the craftsmanship and didn't want to spoil Laddie's pure vibrating joy at the gift. She saved her complaints for later.

Marko isn't sure how he feels about his birthday to be honest. A part of him still wants to celebrate it, because that still makes logical sense to him. After having done it for the past 18 years of his life it feels more weird to stop than not. And. It's not really about the gifts, but being an only child (and a boy) he had a fair amount of attention poured onto him, but he feels...weird asking for that from the Boys, even if by all rights, they'd give him attention for a special day. Marko and Paul will share some pastries and drinks, maybe a body (or three) and Marko is satisfied. Sometimes he wonders if he will ever stop bothering, like David and Dwayne.

-

On the whole for the pack, holidays tend to be small affairs. Feasts Hunts, similar to the hunt shown in the movie are actually much rarer events, only occurring once and a while throughout the year. This is getting a little into oc and YCCM territory, but there is a coven of vampires called The Sarahs that the Boys end up meeting and becoming allies with, and they spend major holidays with them when they're invited.

Vampires have things they celebrate...sort of as a culture? They're not a monolith, and indeed, pretty isolated. A pack from just a state over will look totally different than another, and largely depends on what the members celebrate or decide to do.

Vampires tend to commemorate when they were turned more than when they were born, they celebrate Centennials (hundred year marks), they celebrate 'rainbow teeth' which is when they get old enough (usually older than about 200 or so) and their teeth start showing the opalescence of their bones and blood. They celebrate first kills, if it was consensual. They celebrate mateship.

[magnetarbeam]

Trying to develop a complex interpretation of Ahsoka can be a real bitch sometimes, especially when I'm so ADHD I can rarely even watch a show, let alone analyze data from it.

I'm trying to let go of the perception of her as somehow being a perfect Jedi, that as far as I can tell arose post-TCW. She is an inherently selfless and compassionate individual, and she was brought up with the lessons of any Temple-raised Jedi, but her entire apprenticeship was spent as a soldier. Sure, Jedi aren't supposed to be that, but I really imagine that that's less important to her than the fact that Jedi are that now. It's not long before she's putting everything she has and more into fighting because if she doesn't, it'll mean people die that she could have saved. Especially for the clones, since almost nobody other than the Jedi will put in any amount of effort to save them.

(When I talk in this context about whether or not she's a good Jedi, I'm trying to do so in the context of how it's defined at the time, instead of the philosophy of the ass-end-of-Legends New Jedi Order that I often write her in in time travel scenarios. Her relation to that is a whole separate essay.)

Coming of age in this environment limits the amount of stuff she's able to learn about the role that Jedi are supposed to have. She's less of a negotiator because that skill is in a lot less demand than it was five years ago.

And she's good at fighting. For all that I hate the extent the show goes to display it (I'm not even gonna get into all the levels of bullshit the Marg Sabl thing is) the point is that she is naturally talented as a fighter and a tactician. I think this feeds into one of her major flaws: Her pride.

Losing her squadron over Ryloth is a failure that I used to dismiss as just a natural result of a teenager being shoved into a military command position with no training at all. And sure, it might not have happened if she had been trained, but the point lies in the fact that she thought she could complete the objective herself. There are a few layers to this, I think.

My specific headcanon is that Ahsoka had the top saber combat scores of initiates for three years before the war. She learned from the best pilots in the Order in Anakin and Plo. You also could throw in something about her having killed an akul and taken its teeth for her headdress, proving herself as an adult by Togruta customs, at an exceptionally young age. The effect is that at this point, she's let her skills go to her head, and she assumes she can do it instead of actually thinking it through.

(Had she been trained, I think she'd at least have remembered that she's in an interceptor with no missiles, and that even a heavy bomber like a Y-Wing doesn't try to 1v1 a frigate, let alone a Lucrehulk.)

When she first met Anakin, he initially rejected her, and I think that left her with a fear of disappointing him that she never totally got over. She feels like she needs to constantly prove that she's good enough for him, that she won't just slow him down. The canon from the Jedi Apprentice novels about aging out of the Temple and stuff is... very questionable at best in its logic, especially considering how the TCW movie frames it as Ahsoka probably being actually too young to be a padawan, but I like to use it in my headcanon because it implies that her assignment to Anakin was basically Ahsoka's last hope for being a Jedi, and that further punctuates this fear of rejection and also emphasizes their similarities in terms of both being reckless and aggressive and insolent and the kind of traits that probably make the Order see them both as disasters just waiting to happen.

Obviously Ryloth is a pretty big slap in the face for her, and she does get more reasoned and careful in her approach as time goes on (compare her first and second times on Felucia, for example) but that kind of... self-obsession, I guess, never totally goes away.

The way the GAR is structured doesn't help here, where she's often the only Jedi around to block blaster bolts and make decisions that actually minimize casualties.

Later on, it's less "I won't fail because I haven't failed before" and more "I'll do it because I have to do it to save lives, and I'm the only person who can and will do it." This is even more of a thing when she's fighting to depose Maul. The Mandos (Bo-Katan in disney canon or Spar in my more Legends headcanons) need a Force-user to fight a Force-user, and who knows when or if the broken Senate and Order are going to decide to do anything about it.

Where someone like Obi-Wan might have tried to reason with Maul first, Ahsoka sees that Maul's already done the stuff he has, concludes that he's beyond reasoning, and doesn't give away her position to try to talk him down.

I'm sure I'll come up with more to say here, but I've been typing for like an hour and a half and my attention has moved on.

[bizarrequazar]

12-31 (CST) Year in Review space notes

This was a Twitter space held by QuelleVous et al. to review the events and exposés from the past year. The recording can be found [here].

[notes I’ve done on previous spaces] [glossary of names]

We had a good start to the year with the interview between Zhang Zhehan and Li Xuezheng. 🥺 (recorded on 2021-12-30, released 2022-01-01)

Li Xuezheng was muted on 01-10.

The Instagram was reactivated three days later.

The Zhang Sanjian WeChat was made another three days after that, 01-16. This showed a SIGNIFICANT difference in “Zhang Zhehan’s” personality less than three weeks after the interview.

The WeChat account itself was registered on 2021-12-24 in Shenzhen. Zhang Zhehan’s police report was filed on the same day in Beijing.

Metadata of several of the hat photos dated them to 01-10, the day Li Xuezheng was muted.

Also on 01-10, Xie Yihua mentioned rolling out the brand in her group chat with fans. She didn’t respond to any questions asking about Li Xuezheng’s wellbeing. 

Xie Yihua has only met Li Xuezheng once, when she and Su Shifu tried to convince him to tell Zhang Zhehan not to sue CAPA in December.

The tea shop is the reason many people initially trusted the WeChat account. At the time most of us did truly believe that the shop was owned by Zhang Mama.  -  Zhang Mama’s company was the tea shop’s pu’er supplier, this is no longer the case. No one has yet shown any pu’er cakes that were produced by Zhang Mama’s company in 2022.   -  Zhang Mama only became a majority share holder of this company in 2021-04.  -  No one who went to the tea shop prior to 813 mentioned meeting Zhang Mama there, only Chen Ahyi who would say that Zhang Mama had just left / was there yesterday / would be there tomorrow.  -  The fake Lufei account (2021-11-14) also came from the tea shop, as did the rumor that Zhang Mama listened to the haizhes’ end of year livestream.  -  Some CP fans didn’t trust the tea shop early on. The biggest issue they raised what that it seemed to be using Zhang Zhehan’s elements as a marketing strategy, which they thought was out of character for him.

 An early essay the WeChat posted claimed to have gotten an antidepressant perscription from Zhang Peichao (aka Doc Creepy).  -  Zhang Peichao has no legitimate authority to do so—he has a PhD in philosophy with a focus on psychological theory, and he actually works as a counsellor (no medical training required, he has a bachelor’s in general biology) and writes self help books.   -  Standard doctor’s notes in China now include notes on whether the patient has had COVID, been in contact with someone who has had COVID, etc. This was not present in the photograph of the perscription included with the essay.  -  Zhang Peichao gave talks for an American university that does not have an APA approved psychology department (which also had a cult scandal a few years ago), and he is on a Hong Kong psychology council that is not well known or respected.  -  He made some troubling statements on his Facebook about mainland China which have now been deleted.  -  He’s primarily based in Shenzhen.  -  He also wrote an essay after Word of Honor aired saying that Wen Kexing was attracted to Zhou Zishu because he had mommy issues, and said rude things about Gong Jun’s acting. -  A lot of the early essays posted by Zhang Sanjian mirror his way of thinking and writing.

Zhang Peichao is offline aquaintances with Hao Jingfang, a sci-fi author who early on said similar things about Gong Jun’s acting. This year she encouraged whalers to attack Gong Jun and claimed she had tried to contact lawyers to sue him for encouraging cyberviolence against Zhang Zhehan. She’s currently muted for politically sensitive posts. She also had work of hers included in an anthology alongside Bai Ying’s boss.

Bai Ying is a reporter for Xinhua News.  -  On 2021-12-01 Xinhua published an article co-authored by Bai Ying interviewing  an unnamed CAPA representative who supported their immoral artist lists. Fans discovered upon digging that Bai Ying himself was a member of CAPA’s ethics committee and in fact had interviewed himself.  -  His career goal is to be a playwright, not a reporter, and he has written several plays funded by CAPA.  -  Fans found his Weibo account, which included posts that were sexually suggestive and critical of China and the CCP.  -  He has continued publishing similar articles throughout this year.   -  He has another online persona that was running with the righteous passersby, claiming to be a female retired CCBI official. He wrote a long essay in 2021-12 that was very sympathetic to fans. The account became known after it kept trying to gift Li Xuezheng money during one of his livestreams, which Bai Ying claimed was accidental.   -  He’s participated in nearly every activity smearing Gong Jun and related to Zhang Sanjian.

Another reporter, Han Dandong, has also written things for CAPA.  -  He has a side account on Weibo that liked and reposted both his own articles and things from righteous passersby.  -  That account also is used to sell homeopathic crystals and includes posts making sexual comments about young women.  -  He had an article about AI face changing technology published in Legal Daily on 2022-12-30. People realized that the Weibo post for this turned on comment selection and left a comment tagging Xie Yihua as the top comment. This was briefly pinned as Legal Daily’s featured post.  -  (Legal Daily itself has done a number of other sketchy things related to 813, including publishing multiple articles slandering Zhang Zhehan and implying the Instagram’s validity. It is likely that this is the work of only select people within Legal Daily, given the size of the organization.)

Many of the people on Weibo who have run away after being exposed are still active on side accounts liking posts related to current happenings.

Fandom is one of the largest markets in China, with huge amounts of money generated from it. This is why so much work goes into embedding fake fans in fandom, manipulating fan behaviour, etc. Our fandom is not exceptional in this respect.

The actions we’ve seen from the Zhang Sanjian scam gang have also been seen by scams aimed at other artist’s fans (badly photoshopped advertisements, peddling cheap merchandise, etc.)

Zhang Zhehan’s fandom was ripe for manipulation after 813 due to the trauma, confusion, and information blackout caused by it. The fact that his fandom is still so active despite his absense is astounding.

Lao Ahyi is a director at Songcheng, an executive unit of CAPA.  -  She was (likely still is) part of Songcheng’s strategy to expand Songcheng into doing online IPs.  -  She’s been planted since 2021-08. Her story was that she was an older lady who had just given birth and was fighting for Zhang Zhehan, and there were rumors put out by Umbrella that she was Zhang Zhehan’s cousin.  -  She has not been visibly active since she was exposed in July, but is still on side accounts.

The most recent person to flee was Shirley (the one who claimed that Zhang Sanjian had been specially invited to the Shanghai Theatre Academy performance), who deleted her Weibo account one hour after being exposed. Deleting a Weibo is a fairly lengthy process, it can’t be done this fast by regular users—the fastest method is by customer service, sending them pictures of your ID, and applying with them to delete your account, and even this usually takes at least 24 hours but can take up to a week. For Shirley to be able to do it so quickly means she is in direct contact with someone at Weibo who was able to do it for her. 

A lot of the people who have been exposed are from the education sector, which has suffered massively due to tutors no longer being able to work during the pandemic. 

If the scale of the current scam seems unbelievable, remember that 813 itself was a huge scam involving planted fans, water armies, bought out journalists, etc. If CAPA is capable of that, why not this?

Chinese livestreams are hugely profitable to both livestreamers and platforms, it’s a multi-trillion yuan industry. CAPA absolutely have the funds to be financing the scam.

Sophie  -  Was born to a not so well off family. In college she met a sugar daddy and became one of his girlfriends in Shanghai. He’s a very successful business man who has dated stars.  -  She wrote about this on an account that she seems to have lost the password to, on which she talked a lot about the other girlfriends and her life experiences. This is all information she posted publicly herself.  -  The sugar daddy broke with her after deciding to only date more famous women. Sophie then met a bank worker, known online as Umbrella, by whom she has a daughter. He refused to marry her until she had a son. The two of them have a Weibo account where they only talk about and post pictures with the son, never the daughter.  -  Umbrella has a get rich quick mentality but has horrible investment sense that has led to them being in debt.   -  They planted themselves in the Word on Honor fandom in 2021-03 after Umbrella was laid off.   -  She seems to listen to these spaces. 👋👋  -  Sophie filters people for Xie Yihua—no one talks to Xie Yihua without talking to her first.   -  Sophie tried to be on the CP side first but people didn’t like her lol.  -  Prior to 813, Sophie was involved in the Wang Peiwen fake girlfriend rumors. She private messaged Danny, one of the people in the yacht photo, asking if Zhang Zhehan had a girfriend. Danny immediately replied saying that Zhang Zhehan was single but did not deny that he was the person on the boat with his face covered in the photo. The fact that this was Sophie (posting on a side account) was unintentionally revealed by one of the big whaler accounts.   -  On her CPF account, Sophie helped to spread the fake girlfriend rumors: she was the one who identified the girl in the photo as Wang Peiwen. Screenshots she posted claiming to be Wang Peiwen messaging Zhang Zhehan’s studio on WeChat were actually of an account run by Sophie.  -  Sophie is very bad about giving herself away more through the ways she reacts to people exposing her.

A consistent behaviour with the scam gang is them shitting on Gong Jun and trying to blame him for the things that have happened to Zhang Zhehan.

Prayjane (involved in the girlfriend rumors) has likely been involved because her husband is not doing well financially. People like Lexus and Peter don’t have clear motives other than being clout chasers. 

Fake Uncle wrote an essay in 2021-07 (on the same day Sophie posted the girlfriend “clairifcations”) claiming to be Zhang Zhehan’s uncle.  -  He claimed to have been there when Zhang Zhehan made his hole in one in golf. Reciepts from the hotel do not support this.  -  He claimed to be a retired police officer who was helping Zhang Zhehan with research for Formed Police Unit. He never went through police training let alone was an actual officer, and the book on another police officer that he claimed to have co-authored was not written by him, the publishing house had never heard of him.  -  He’s friends with Lao Ahyi, she deleted one of her Weibo accounts after Fake Uncle was exposed.   -  The essay led to a lot of rumors against Zhang Zhehan post-813.   -  The essay included an entire paragraph about the tea shop.

We now know that there were people in Zhang Zhehan’s team prior to August who are not to be trusted, so it’s probable that they intentionally gave him bad guidance on how to respond to the various smears going on.

Like Sophie, Lexus’s entire life is online because he’s posted about it himself. Zhang Zhehan had basically everything that Lexus wants (fame, a singing career, good at golf, handsome, etc.). Despite the fact that he has gained some notoriety through his connection to Zhang Sanjian, he is openly resentful of the fact that people only pay attention to him because of that. 

Zhang Su (Susu)  -  His entire persona as fans knew him was basically created by fanfic authors and what he said himself. The only times he had publicly interacted with Zhang Zhehan were during the bike trip after they graduated (which Susu did not finish) and on Taste of Time in 2018.  -  He’s signed to an MCN connected to CAPA and his boss is friends with CAPA executives. He also has professional connections with Xie Yihua’s sister.

The way that some of the men in the scam gang (Lexus, Master Wu, Peng Lihu, Su Shifu, Zhang Peichao) behave with female fans is incredibly predatory. A lot of other fake fans have also been found to be middle aged men posing as young women. If any whalers do read these notes, please be aware of this and be cautious.   -  There was one point where they encouraged whalers who had bought the brand’s necklaces to post photos of themselves wearing them in revealing tops and bras. 

Candy break! Everyone’s favourite candy from this year:

The hexagon ring behind the glass in Gong Jun’s birthday “leave of absense” letter. 

Valentine’s Day, Gong Jun’s 1129 1314 511 kadian, and the photos from where Zhang Zhehan had once taken photos that can be overlayed to make them stand together.

The Anon account, in particular how Zhang Sanjian has reacted to the account regardless of the Anon account’s actual validity.

The fact that Xie Yihua still can’t get in touch with Zhang Zhehan meanwhile Gong Jun has been quite openly travelling with him.

How Xie Yihua never responded to anyone’s investigations until QuelleVous revealed that her Baidu Baike page had been edited on 813, when Xie Yihua panicked and posted a long essay refuting it. Her overreaction is the reason QuelleVous et al. became known to the Chinese side of the fandom.

The picture from Yunnan of “Gong Jun” from behind in a hoodie where the anatomical proportions of his height and shoulders match Zhang Zhehan’s more than Gong Jun’s. Other observations like the thumb, the photos being cut so that the butt isn’t visible, how illogical it is that Gong Jun would change outfits in the middle of taking photos. (It could have been different days, but why would you go to the same place at 5am on two different days?)

In Gong Jun’s belated birthday livestream he mentioned his parents going home the day after he got the cakes while he stayed in Yunnan, so who took that photo of him at the luxury hotel?

When Gong Jun was replying in the birthday AMA and there was two distinct writing styles being used. 

How Zhang Sanjian posted an essay a couple days later talking about watching the movie Gong Jun had mentioned in the AMA. Pick a narrative bro, do you hate him or not?

QuelleVous says Xiao Yu bought a motorcycle this year.

Gong Jun’s bodyguard (”Bond-dage”?) could probably tell a lot of stories lol. He appears in a lot of fansite photos but there are times when he’s absent, so there are rumors that the two of them share him. There was also a time during the Legend of AnLe filming where the bodyguard came over to look at the CPF in the mascot costume.

(This humble note taker’s favourite candy was the Ritz Carlton rumor, where Zhang Zhehan and Gong Jun supposedly were seen outside the hotel on Zhang Zhehan’s lunar birthday. 🥺)

Back to serious stuff:

For the Instagram bike trip in August, plane tickets were bought for Zhang Zhehan, Zhang Mama, and Xiao Yu to go to where it started but none of them actually showed up for the flights. Xie Yihua and co. have stopped leaking flight itineraries since QuelleVous revealed this.

Some pretty well known paparazzi have been paid to spread the low quality “chance meeting” photos of Zhang Sanjian. (Fansites at least put up the pretense of being fans and showing fan loyalty, paparazzi just sell to the highest bidder. Why are you trusting them?)

The CPF who initially leaked the 03-01 airport photos that we all thought were Zhang Zhehan (they were not) deleted her account after being questioned about it.

Wendy was the one who told everyone to listen to Su Shifu’s podcast after 813, and she was asking everyone to spread it around. 

Sophie was the one who outed the fact that Su Shifu had been fired, using his real name.

Thank you to the Ding Dongs and everyone who has worked to share clarifications about Zhang Zhehan this year. Thank you to everyone who has stayed here and stayed strong for Zhang Zhehan. Thank you to Gong Jun for all the little rays of sunshine.

Let’s hope 2023 brings Zhang Zhehan’s official return, that Gong Jun stays safe and successful, that both of them are able to do whatever they want, and that many many people go to jail.

Happy New Year everyone! 🥳🥳

[boyfridged]

Hi! As an avid reader of your Jason metas I'd like to ask: What would you think of a Huntress, Spoiler and Red Hood-team up? All three characters have a complicated past with crimes, a down-to-earth-mentality and problems with the Bat... Thanks for posting your thoughts & stay safe!

new jersey girls... what a team. it would definitely be interesting! i think maybe moreso because of their differences rather than similarities; as to the down-to-earth-mentality, i would argue that jason has the least of that (in my opinion he gets dogmatic in his understanding of the role of killing at times and has unrealistic ideals regarding the level of self-sacrifice and involvement vigilantes should be ready for). but as you said, they do all have a complicated past regarding the criminal underworld, and past issues with batman... yet, all of their personal circumstances are so specific; i think it invites a scenario in which they unintentionally project their problems on each other and misunderstand everything terribly. although maybe a better occasion for it would be for all of them to get team-ups as duos before they start working on anything together.

i don't want to get too much into dynamics, because i think talking of "dynamics" is usually useless without any background on how and why and when the characters meet, but i do have a premonition that helena would find a lot of red hood's past and philosophy questionable... also, as it stands, both steph and helena do not care much for bruce's assessment of their character; jay still does. and it could be fun to make it stand out, because for the first time in a gotham team up, it's jason who is actively concerned if their actions are bat-sanctioned. (<- i'm not saying it would make him *stop* if he thought what they are doing is right; but it definitely would be very much on his mind!)

having said that, as much as i would love to see them as a team (or even just hanging out!) i'd rather it wasn't ever a permanent thing. that's mostly because i don't like jason in teams long-term in general though, but that's a whole another matter.

thank you for such a sweet message accompanying this ask by the way! stay safe too

[onecornerface]

my theory of art's meaning (rough & vague overview)

My response to Kane Baker's video "Interpretation of Art" (really good introductory overview of some theories in art interpretation-- subscribe to Kane B for some of the best philosophy videos on YouTube!):

I notice that there has been no attempt here to define or characterize “meaning,” which seems a huge missed step. Of course, we should be careful not to define “meaning” in a question-begging way that presupposes one of the theories under investigation. But I’m inclined to define it in the following (hopefully practical and non-circular) way: “Meaning” is roughly equivalent to “whatever it is that we’re looking for when we do art interpretation.”

If we accept this meta-level view of meaning, then I think it provides some guidance in evaluating the three first-order views of meaning you’ve put forward, regarding meaning’s relation to artist’s intention. I’ll briefly defend my meta-theory, then briefly discuss how it justifies a first-order pluralist theory of meaning.

(Note: I have very little background in philosophy of art or aesthetics, and only a vague recollection of occasional discussion of literary theory in a few undergrad classes from years ago. I’ve been very slowly cobbling together my art theory for many years—but without a lot of sustained effort, nor research, nor confidence in its correctness. Still, here’s what I’ve got offhand.)

First, my theory seems faithful to how we obtain the concept of meaning, and why we are interested in it. We don’t come out of a box with the notion of artistic meaning. We arrive at the notion of artistic meaning through the act of thoughtful engagement with artworks, of many kinds.

My view is metaphysically modest, not going too far beyond the observable facts without good reason. I think there are various facts, such as (1) the facts about what the author intended, and (2) the facts about the artistic conventions (of the author’s culture and/or the reader’s culture), and (3) the facts about how the artwork affects any given reader, and similar thin descriptive facts of these sorts (as well as possibly various normative facts). But I have seen no reason to believe that any aggregation of these sorts of facts grounds some *further* (second-order, normative or quasi-normative, etc.) fact about THE “meaning.”

In order to show that there is a single “meaning” in some further sense, especially a unified sense (as contrasted against my pluralism below), I think you’d need to provide something like a compelling broader theory which features “meaning” in some unified sense, or in which some single concept “meaning” is necessary or helpful to explaining some phenomena—which hasn’t been done here, and which I haven't seen.

My view helps explain why there is so much disagreement about meaning, e.g. between intentionalists and various schools of anti-intentionalists such as New Critics, Reader-Response critics, whatever view Barthes meant by “death of the author,” and so on. It is because different readers/viewers are interested in different kinds of interpretation, and end up talking past each other. (Note, this kind of argument can go too far. Not all philosophical disputes involve disputants talking past each other. I think it is plausible here, however.)

One may worry my view gets the order of explanation backwards, between meaning and interpretation. If interpretation is grounded by meaning, then is my view problematically interpretation-first? I can’t readily elaborate on this, but I think my view isn't committed to a problematic order of explanation.

One may also defend a unified sense of artistic meaning by analogy to a unified sense of linguistic meaning—there’s a single truth to what (say) a sentence means. Similarly, there may be a single truth to what (say) a movie or book, qua an artwork, means. However, I think this analogy fails. It is not at all obvious that artworks (as whole entities) are the same kind of thing, with the same kind of meaning, as an individual sentence. The fact that artworks are (usually) co-constituted by sentences doesn’t clearly change this, either. Sentences have features such as syntax which are more-or-less formal a lot of the time, and are co-constituted by words that often have referents, and the sentences as a whole are often truth-apt. These and other aspects of sentences arguably don’t have any close parallel when it comes to artworks. (We may think an artwork is “true” in some symbolic way, or has a true or false “message,” but this is not obviously analogous to the truth-aptness of a sentence.)

There is a widespread tendency to speak of the “meaning” of an artwork such that there’s an implicit analogy to the “meaning” of sentences. I think this analogy is likely very misleading on many levels. Here my thoughts are at least similar to your challenges to the art-conversation analogy.

In any case, my meta-level theory of artistic meaning provides me with some argument for first-order artistic meaning pluralism, against (but somewhat encompassing) the three monistic theories you proposed.

First, we can do forms of art interpretation that seek the author’s intentions. Second, we can do forms of art interpretation that seek some combination of the author’s intentions and other facts. Third, we can do forms of art interpretation that are flat-out uninterested in (or even hostile to) discovering the artist’s intentions.

The fact that we can do all three kinds of interpretation is evidence that there are three or more kinds of meaning, i.e. meaning pluralism.

Relatedly, often there are several kinds of “meaning” being conflated under a single label. For instance, the question of whether “Deckard is a replicant” is a dispute over what happens in a given film. But in discussing an artwork’s “meaning,” we also frequently mean something more like its “message,” e.g. what Blade Runner “has to say” about modern society or technology (or whatever else). And I’m pretty sure there are many more things that are denoted by an artwork’s “meaning” beyond these two things, as well. Although this does not directly support my pluralist theory, it does count slightly against the notion that artistic “meaning” has a single unified concept. However, a broad nuanced theory may be able to relate these different kinds or senses of “meaning” under one framework (which some art theorists have indeed done), so this is not a decisive argument.

One may think my view is too subjectivist, since I ground it in our actual practices of interpretation. But surely we can do a bad job of interpreting an artwork, or we can engage in modes of interpretation that are worthless or bad. One might think the “meaning” of an artwork is what grounds the fact that we are interpreting the artwork badly or wrongly, i.e. when we get the meaning wrong. However, I think my view can accommodate this and is not excessively subjectivist.

If we’re interested in interpreting the artwork in light of the artist’s intentions or the artistic conventions (of our culture, or of the artist’s culture, etc.), and we have false beliefs about the artist’s intentions or the artistic conventions, then our interpretations (in these respects) will be objectively mistaken, and we will arrive at false ideas about the artwork’s meaning(s). However, this is compatible with it being up to us whether to be interested or uninterested in interpreting the artwork in light of objective facts such as the artist’s intentions or some set of artistic conventions. If we’re uninterested in these facts, and we instead choose to interpret the artwork in some other way altogether, then we aren't necessarily making a mistake.

Relatedly, some forms of artistic interpretation may also be objectively more valuable than others. However, this is a question of value, not a question of correctness. The fact that I might engage in a less-valuable form of artistic interpretation may suggest that I am discerning a less-valuable kind of artistic meaning—not that I am failing to discern an artistic meaning in the first place. So the option is open for (say) someone with intentionalist sympathies to concede that some non-intentionalist ways of artistic interpretation are accurate routes to meaning, but deny that they are valuable (or vice versa).

[meta-shadowsong]

An Argument With a Particular Word of God Quote

Note: I wrote this essay a while ago--several months ago--and then just kind of sat on it; but the quote it focuses on has been crossing my dash again the last day or so and it popped back into my head and I decided to go ahead and share.

So. There is a George Lucas quote, I believe from the Attack of the Clones commentary. And I have. Extremely Strong Negative Feelings About It.

The quote in question:

“[The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can’t hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally] and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he’d have been taken in his first years and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.”

Okay. To be clear, my problem here is not with the attachment definition/philosophy that’s being posited here, nor with the description of Anakin’s attitude towards it. The first half of the first sentence, the part that’s bracketed--that’s all completely reasonable/true enough and I don’t have a problem with it.

It’s everything after that.

TL;DR: I think it undermines other key themes and conflicts with certain story/dialogue points in the rest of the saga (meaning episodes I-VI); and I feel like it says some pretty uncomfortable and/or negative things about emotional growth, childhood trauma, Shmi, and the Jedi Order.

Let’s break it down.

First, this only works if you look at the PT trilogy, Anakin’s fall from grace, in a complete vacuum, and ignore the OT and Luke’s journey. Because guess what? Luke was also raised outside the Order, to an even older age than Anakin, and while he struggled in ESB and he did in fact have to learn the hard way, he did learn. (Also, I haven’t rewatched ANH recently, and it doesn’t tend to get referenced much in these discussions, but I think it’s worth nothing that--yes, everything in that movie takes place over like three days and he doesn’t have a lot of time to think/process/start wallowing in his grief; but when you compare the way he handles things there with the way Anakin reacts in similar situations, and he’s already working from a more solid foundation, one that had nothing to do with being raised by the Jedi.)

Second, it’s a…weirdly deterministic take for a series that otherwise places a lot of emphasis on choice. On people choosing to do better (or to not do better). Again, that’s all over the OT, particularly with Luke and Han and again with the second half of Anakin/Vader’s journey. So this particular quote undermines that broader theme/message in a big way.

Third, it completely ignores the fact that this concept, about change being inevitable and you have to be able to move on and let go? Is articulated first and (arguably) most clearly by Shmi. Right there. In the movie just prior to this. That this man also wrote. (“You can’t stop the change, any more than you can stop the suns from setting.” That entire scene.) The mother whose parenting Lucas is essentially blaming for Anakin’s tendency to codependency/unhealthy obsession in relationships.

I am. Really not okay with Shmi being thrown under the bus like this. And, like, there’s probably a broader cultural whatever about how motherhood is simultaneously idealized and ignored in modern (Western) culture and art, and how that influences the way Shmi is portrayed and used and eventually fridged, let alone how she’s talked about outside the text itself. But like. She did in fact say this. The fact that Anakin didn’t grasp it and internalize it is not her fault.

Which is sort of tangentially related to a sort of…broader issue I have with the worldbuilding, especially when it comes to this idealized philosophy, which is that…yes, of course the Jedi are the Good Guys, and the philosophy they live by is a good one (and also acknowledging its real-world Buddhist roots). I am not in any way disputing either of those points. But the idea that only the Jedi, and only by accessing Jedi training/philosophy/etc. through this pretty narrow set of idealized circumstances, can allow you to be a good person in this specific idealized way/to follow this philosophy of non-attachment and learn how to love without codependency, leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Especially when you have the same lesson/philosophy/ideal coming from a completely different angle in the same goddamn film. In short, the Jedi aren’t wrong, but they don’t have a monopoly on being right.

Okay. Uh. So those are (that last tangent aside) the writing/structure problems I have with this quote. Namely, it doesn’t entirely line up with the themes and storyline of the six films as a whole, and it doesn’t even mesh with the prior movie in this same trilogy.

But there are other issues here, too.

For one thing, this is…this really doesn’t paint the Jedi or their teachings in a very positive light.

Like…this is basically saying, “of course the Jedi can teach people how to love appropriately and avoid attachment/codependency/obsession/dangerous emotional tangles, that’s What They Do, after all--but only if the student starts as essentially a blank slate and has nothing to unlearn.” That’s…not a good look.

Also, it’s kind of a shitty take on childhood trauma? Yes, it’s hard to learn and grow past these things, but the idea that it’s not possible, aside from the implications about the Jedi Order’s pedagogical abilities, is super discouraging for people who come to this path/philosophy later in life than the Ideal. It implies that emotional growth and healing aren’t really feasible and, again, the only way to be capable of this kind of nonattachment is to start from a blank slate. Which a) I don’t think that’s how people or emotions work; and b) again, a super shitty and discouraging thing to say to anyone who might want to try.

(And before anyone comes at me with ‘there is no try,’ that quote taken at face value has the same issue; but if you look at it in context, it’s about committing to a course of action and knowing what you’re capable of, especially in a fairly simple situation/when faced with a fairly straightforward problem. When you also take into account the later conversation about trying to reach Vader, there’s also an acceptance of the fact that there are other factors that are completely out of Luke’s control here, that all he can do is put his commitment and genuine good faith effort and make the attempt to the best of his abilities, but he can’t simply ‘do’ without the other party meeting him halfway. But that’s another essay for another time.)

Lastly, and this is a much more…it has as much to do with modern fandom discussions as with what Lucas specifically said twenty years ago. But there’s this tendency to use entry into the Jedi Order as analogous to adoption. And that’s not wrong! It’s in fact a pretty good analogy! Even before it got reinforced by certain conversations in the Obi-Wan series! But quotes like this highlight the problem with that analogy, especially when coupled with the age restriction on entry into the Order.

Look. There are a lot of issues with the modern adoption system. I’m not nearly qualified to comment on all of them, beyond acknowledging that Some Shit’s Fucked Up. (Not all of it! But Some.) And one of those issues is that, unless the child in question is a [healthy, white] infant, the chances of them getting adopted are extremely slim. Because there’s this attitude that they won’t really belong, they won’t really be a part of their new family, they won’t really bond/bond properly with their new parents, unless they’re brought in as a blank slate. That the (perceived) greater Difficulties in taking in an older child are Too Much/Not Worth It…that kind of attitude.

And, I mean, I’m not a parent, adoptive or otherwise. I’ve never been fully responsible for raising a child (or for any other human being), and I know that it’s a complicated and difficult decision/task even under the most ideal of circumstances. But the idea that older kids aren’t good enough/don’t count/will never really be the children of their new parents is something I know I’ve seen broken down as a toxic mentality before.

Especially in a culture (fandom) that places such a huge emphasis on found family/family of choice and the bonds that grow from there (aka, the refutation of that idea), why is it that, in certain Jedi-positive circles and when looking at quotes like this one from Lucas, it’s just accepted at face value when it comes to the Jedi Order and their adoption/recruitment practices?

Full disclosure, the age limit is basically The Problem I have with the PT-era Jedi Order’s general practices and the one thing that I genuinely think does at least as much harm as good (or the harm it does is significant enough) and should be re-evaluated when Luke (or Rey, or whoever) rebuilds; I’ve written about this before, but, among other things, this idea tends to become a feedback loop which sets the few exceptions up for failure, which then reinforces the idea that older students will fail, and on and on*; this aside from the issues it presents to the people who aren’t lucky enough to be found in the right age bracket or have the combination of Circumstances working for them that Anakin did to become one of the exceptions; the fact that there are no viable alternatives for training and/or support for said potential latecomers is also a huge part of the problem. Anyway, that’s definitely coloring my views here, especially when we look at the Implications rather than the parts where it’s contradicted by other points in the text itself.

I’m going to sort of wind up here by saying that…after all of that, I don’t think that this quote is entirely wrong, exactly. I’ve written about this before (although maybe not posted it, haha), but I do think that the Order’s habit/background of generally not accepting latecomers, combined with Anakin’s particular background and issues, mean that the Order as it stands in the twilight of the Republic was not necessarily a good fit for him when he was brought to their attention, and that he might have been more stable/successful if he’d been brought in earlier, or if the initial refusal had stood and he’d found a different path for himself.

But boiling that down to, essentially, ‘Anakin Wasn’t Raised Right,’ and in so doing a) ignoring the entire other half of this saga/some of the key themes of this saga as a whole; b) forgetting what Shmi said in the last movie/throwing her under the bus; and c) making everyone involved in this situation look bad…I don’t know, that’s really not the way to do it.

*To avoid yet another long tangent…there is an interesting essay that could be teased out about that one line in the mantra, ‘there is no ignorance; there is knowledge,’ and how it relates to the idea of preconceptions. We see this in this particular discussion, both in a sort of positive light (when someone with no preconceptions approaches the Jedi path/philosophy, there is a strong tendency for them to succeed at it), and in a negative light (the feedback loop re: nontraditional students I mentioned). But it also comes up in other areas--look at how Force Ghosts are handled, for example. How much effort it takes for Qui-Gon to connect with Yoda; how the first assumption is that Yoda is hallucinating. Compare that to Luke, who has absolutely zero preconceptions/prior knowledge about how the Force works and how it relates to death, so that when he starts hearing (and later seeing) Ben, his response is ‘this makes as much sense as anything else I’ve learned in the last week sure let’s go with it.’ And, of course, Yoda that line about how wonderful the mind of a child is, uncluttered by such things. Not to mention the bit I mentioned earlier, about raising the X-wing from the swamp, and how that relates to preconceptions and expectations; also related is one of my favorite Qui-Gon quotes, “Your focus determines your reality.”

Anyway, I just think that’s interesting to contemplate--Jedi are people, after all, and this is a very People problem to have.

[grendelsmilf]

What are your ideas on what Anne did in between leaving Amphibia and becoming a herpetologist?

oh god never try to answer long asks on mobile i had so many words typed of this and then i saw a rainbow and took a picture of it and when i went back to the tumblr app it was gone 😭 anyway this is a rly cute question here are some ideas (got long so i put it under a readmore)

she gets a new phone since she gave her previous one to sprig. only the old phonecase she has isn't made for her new model of phone. she finds a similar, cat-themed case but, ugh. it just isn't the same.

she joins her school's basketball team. she still plays tennis of course, but she also likes doing a team sport.

she also tries out fencing, but soon tires of it once she realizes that it's forbidden to fight dirty.

she and sasha start dating a little while after marcy leaves. they're together for less than a year when sasha starts to get worried that they might be getting too codependent and that some space could be good for them. anne agrees under the assumption that they'll get back together sooner rather than later, but in high school sasha gets a serious boyfriend. anne is extremely conflicted by this development, and starts distancing herself from sasha. they still talk and hang out and have sleepovers, and they always hang out with marcy whenever she comes to LA, but they're not as close as they once were. sasha just assumes that anne is busy with her other friends and doesn't overthink it.

her high school is way bigger than her middle school, and anne makes lots of new friends very quickly. some of them are also into amphibians, and they go to the woods together to look for frogs.

she gets really into baking, and starts making desserts for her family's restaurant. they're really good. some people come just for the desserts.

she starts applying herself more in school, and realizes that she actually really enjoys science. she even likes physics, despite the fact that it involves math and she sucks at math.

terri offers to tutor her in physics, but they barely work on homework together, and mostly just talk theory and philosophy. anne is fascinated by it, and thinks that maybe if they discussed this in class instead of kinematics she wouldn't be falling asleep all the damn time.

whenever anne is struggling with her schoolwork, she calls up marcy and has her walk her through it. marcy will always drop everything she's doing to help anne with her assignments. one time marcy stopped in the middle of making out with a girl to explain anne's math homework to her. that really killed the mood.

anne briefly considers applying to harvard, and uses this as an excuse to go to massachussetts to visit marcy. she knows not so deep down that she wants to be close to her family, and also that harvard is pure evil, but it's a fun notion to entertain for the sake of spending a very fun week with her oldest friend.

after sasha gets herself a boyfriend (who is anne's mortal enemy for reasons unclear), anne is determined to get a girlfriend. this shouldn't even be too difficult, considering that a few of anne's friends have crushes on her. but after a few failed kisses in which it's evident to all parties involved that anne feels nothing romantic for them, anne decides to give up. it's only in college (once she no longer sees sasha on a daily basis, funny that...) that anne enters a serious relationship. they're together for three years, but break up when her gf gets a job offer in florida (she's also a herpetologist) and decide that long distance isn't for them. they stay friends and still text all the time though.

she majors in bio of course, but she minors in film studies. anne has always loved cinema, and being in LA, her college offers a lot of really great courses in the subject. she even works at a movie theater for a couple summers, which her friends love because it means she can take them to go see movies for free.

she gets a tattoo of a lilypad on her wrist (where she broke her hand the first time she defended wartwood) and a lotus on the small of her back (where marcy and sasha have their scars). they're tastefully done, and mean a lot to her.

when domino dies, anne holds a funeral, and all her closest friends come, including sasha. she delivers a eulogy and then they watch her favorite movies on the couch while eating ice cream. the boonchuys wear all black for weeks. they loved that cat more than life itself.

she gets a tattoo of a domino on her other wrist.

okay i didn't want to end on a sad one so: anne asks sasha to go see love choice 3: the choicening with her. they haven't talked in a while, so sasha is surprised when anne asks her, but anne tells her that there's no one else with whom she'd rather see the final installment of the best series that totally isn't a ripoff of twilight and the hunger games ever.

they get a big bucket of popcorn and red and blue slushees (respectively). afterwards, anne remarks that she thinks the main girl should end up with cyborg guy's sister who was introduced in the second movie. sasha's like "wow you are literally too gay to appreciate these movies" and anne's like "you're saying that like you're not gay" and sasha's like "im bi" and anne's like "yeah sure whatever."

as they leave the theater sasha's like "you know, if marcy were here, she'd criticize this movie for its commercialism, lack of originality, and promotion of shallow love narratives invented by the patriarchy." anne's just glares at her like, "yeah, so it's a GOOD THING MARCY ISN'T HERE."

[milfjagger]

(sending this as an ask so as not to clog ur mentions, also content warnings for frank discussion of incest, necrophilia & cannibalism)

in response to the discussion on whether necrophilia (or incest) will ever get the #cannibalism treatment on tumblr, i actually don’t think it’s useful to separate incest from cannibalism and necrophilia as questions to explore in literature/philosophy on the basis of more people having direct experience with incest in their lives. firstly, some people do experience necrophilia/cannibalism, and i don’t know at what point we draw a line between “real issues” and “fictional issues” when those things do happen in real life, if rarely.

i also think that necrophilia, cannibalism, and incest all do occupy a similar sphere in the cultural consciousness because they are all examples of the violation of bodily autonomy taken to extremes. i think all three phenomena make us think about boundaries of the self, power and control, violence, and objectification. these are all ideas that have real weight in everyone’s lives—regardless of our individual experiences.

i do recognize that cannibalism on tumblr is often discussed in a joke-y way (i do this too), and i agree with what i feel like you’re implying: that it would be careless to joke about phenomena (like incest) that have grievously harmed others, in front of those harmed people—which is inevitable, given the public forum of tumblr. (correct me if i’m misinterpreting.) i guess i don’t really know how to navigate that question, even if i think we should feel free to discuss these topics in a more serious way together.

thank you for taking the time to type this out! my opinions on issues like this are very malleable and i have no shame in adapting them based on input from others, so i think maybe you're right about it not being helpful to rigidly separate "real issues" from "fictional issues". and you're absolutely right about all three things forcing us to confront extremes of the human experience regarding violence and abuse of power, which is exactly why i myself and so many others find them so compelling within fiction and art.

in response to the last paragraph, it's a tricky area to navigate and i definitely don't have the answers either. all i can say is that we should all be mindful of the real implications of (in particular) rape, pedophilia and incest - which affect so many people, and, like you say, you don't know the experiences or traumas of people who might end up reading your posts - when discussing literature and art containing those topics. there is a balance there somewhere between finding "dark" or "taboo" media (sorry for the vague language there, I'm not sure what else to call it) interesting and compelling, and actually being disrespectful towards the lived experiences of others. it's something I've been thinking a lot about lately and i am always happy to discuss this and take in lots of different opinions. once again, thank you so much for this!