#to understand the memes/analysis/and art that comes from it

[just-honey-dewd]

Miraculous Ladybug: Spoilers for Perfection (Part 1)

I’m dead.

Warning, I’m quite critical in this review/ramble. MLB spoilers for S5 E12, cuz screw chronological episode releases. Part 2 will cover Emotion (cuz I had to stop it halfway to process the madness).

Fun fact. I feel like the jump in development between these two episodes actually speaks to the amount of episodes you could skip if you wanted to see what this show would be like if it went through a more “Show don’t tell” angle. If anyone has come up with a definitive “show-don’t-tell” cut of the show once it’s finally finished, pls send me a drive or a recommendation list, or I’ll have to do it myself /hj

For realskies, I….? Perfection was middle school secondhand cringe I suppose. The “I love” “moo” thing is self-aware, but still cringe nonetheless. Wondered of a funnier variation of her trying to say “ew” instead in reaction to Adrien’s established camembert stench like she keeps holding up a picture of camembert each time to try to get herself to say “I love (ew)” — but never even considers the correlation with that stench and Plagg. I’m actually curious btw about the french variation as a non-french speaker. Je taime? Right? Idk how the cow card would play into this.

Also mad props to MLB for tackling miscommunication and issues like fear of rejection, fear of failure, golden child syndrome with more care between the Marinette and Kagami, and having that translate into an akuma — screw you I could care less what they’re actually called now — that wasn’t just blindly destructive to everyone around em. More self-destructive, which I find to be more common for people irl. The ratio of people who’d use their negativity to lash out on others is hard to gage, but I know it’s been way too late in the game for there to be only this one akuma who’d rather sit and wallow in their lonliness. More people would rather crawl in a hole and die than inconvenience a stranger.

That desire to want to sit in isolation for days on end is quite relatable. More so than the manbaby temper tantrums you’d see from Mayor Bourgeious, the Ice cream guy, or Gabriel Agreste ffs. One can argue that Hawkmoth intentionally seeks out powerhungry hateful individuals: but that requires assuming Gabriel wasn’t just blindly choosing anyone with shallow grievances, with his powers amplifying them to be stupidly destructive. So I think the less complicated conclusion is Gabriel doesn’t seek out the strongest of negative emotions, (the baby akumas shoulda been a dead indicator), but he’ll take anything. Still doesn’t take away from the fact that aside from “Perfection”, there hasn’t been any other akuma who’s emulated what it’d really feel like to have your deep negative feelings of inadequecy be amplified. Or maybe I’m just projecting, which in that case, my bad 😋

On a separate note, this show had the potential to explore the deeply tragic misuse of the butterfly miraculous — that capacity to empathise with others, recognise their sadness beneath the anger —it really coulda been a good eye opener for mental health in society. But ehhh I already shot myself in the foot long ago for even insinuating MLB would ever try to reflect or deeply respond to modern-day issues. It really isn’t more than what its premise surmises. Aside from also being an anti-rich, soap opera, pre-teen angst monstrosity. But I digress.

Overall, Perfection is not for my age demographic but the sentiment comes across. Also, Adrien attempting to sing a dramatic ballad, and it being overshadowed by Marinette and Kagami’s shared feelings of inadequecy in their relationship to each other was both disheartening but also hilarious to me. “No worries, Adrien can always come up with another song from the heart off-screen! Besties come first!” Slay honestly. (Actually I take that back, Kagami don’t follow Lila’s IG!!!—)

Thanks for reading!

[itsbansheebitch]

More thoughts

I get both sides, but I feel a little confused they couldn't find four people in their +25 employees

Data analyst (Are you seriously telling me you couldn't personally email or even just HIRE matpat's team who do data analytics as part of Theorist Media to help??? The man would be overjoyed to help???)

Editor (Put the first $6 towards a can of coffee grounds, dude)

PR Team (Even, like, a single person, please, for the love of god)

Business Major (Or literally anyone that has taken a home ec/budgeting/personal finance class)

First, the Dish Granted series was started when gold leaf burgers were novel, now it's seen as tone deaf (for obvious reasons) it should have shifted to something like interviews with people who make that kind of food or local businesses (like parmesan cheese shops in Parma, Italy) or the history of food (like talking about the history of modern Native American slavery on Californian wine vinyards). Not to mention the untapped potential of Food Fraud topics. Either shift it, or scrap it. Any data analyst or chronically online person could tell you that.

Second, why did you keep "anyone can afford $6 a month" in? Are the editors asleep at the wheel? Are they overworked? What is going on? You know damn well to not make generalizations about what people can afford. That's NEVER a good idea, especially when you KNOW (because YT gives you analytics) that most of your viewers are young (16/18-30/35 range, I'd guess) who probably, either 1, are still in school and either arent paid well/dont have jobs OR 2, arent paid well and tired of people's shit, like people who own businesses talking about "tough financial decisions." To them, Watcher isn't going to look different from the other people talking like that, because this was so sudden, with no input from fans, and in the video you hear shit like "anyone can afford [X]." To be frank, it wouldn't really matter what the amount is, because that generalization goes against the message they have stood by for years. THAT is a slap in the face.

Third, what are yall doing with the budgeting? Every artist has a right to make art that they are proud of. Every artist deserves to have their work seen if they so choose. Every artist deserves to make a living. HOWEVER, there are MANY options online when it comes to making money, especially on YT. You could get into marketing, data analysis, expanding your demographic, looking at what people are interested in right now VS what will stand the test of time (not gold leaf burgers), etc.

You have to either have these skills, develop these skills, or hire someone to do it for you. It's understandable that you would want a team behind the production, but I find +25 employees to be WAY too many people, especially in LA. Bailey Sarian has a Dark History section on her YT (and Spotify podcast) where she has hired historians to help make sure her episodes are as accurate as possible. You've caught heat before from Puppet History's missing & incorrect info, you should do the same. She has about three (3) "intermissions" per episode for ad breaks. I never see anyone complain. People WOULD listen to yall talk for that long (+1 hour videos), tbh, though that's not necessary.

Why are yall out here with Teslas, expensive food, new gear, scripts (where there weren't scripts before, PH is different, that makes sense), and "better than TV" level sets??? I need to put your accountant in this week's church prayer list what the actual hell??? Ya'll, this video is literally the meme:

Guys help me budget:

LA Rent: 2K per month

Videos: 100K per vid

+25 Employees: God only knows

New stuff for videos: Don't get me started

Like, are you serious?

You have a right to do whatever you want with your art. You have a right to charge whatever you'd like for that art. You have a right to make a living from your art and you have a right to ask your fans for money.

Your fans have a right to be angry when they've been supporting yall for, what, almost 10 years? They have a right to choose when and where to spend their money even when you've made an impact. They have a right to feel betrayed, especially when there are better options (like Nebula or consulting with Theorist Media).

Fans DO NOT have a right to be racist to any members of Watcher, now that they have made a decision they do not agree with.

I personally, think this is a really silly decision and could have been solved (haha solved) with a simple YT poll, but apparently we had to get... this. I respect their decision, I just don't think it was a smart one. I wish them the best, and I hope they find a better solution. Any further comment from me will depend on what steps they take next.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

I can understand the argument that someone's background influences their views on politics/social issues, everything and how that transpires in the art they're making, but only using that frame of analysis is reductive. More often working class directors get the recognition for their working class stories, whilst anything above it that gets into privileged teritory will most likely be criticized. Especially in this era in cinema and economic/political climate in which "eat the rich" is now a theme/meme in pop culture.

But I do stand on my opinion that it can be reductive sometimes. I could never look at Visconti's work only thinking that a rich count made all those films. When the entire argument is based on that it might ignore not only elements that are actually working in the film, but also other legitimate frames of criticizing the piece if it lacks in other areas.

I think this applies to Saltburn as well. I've seen the classism critique everywhere. And on one hand it does apply. Yes, the director is this posh woman and it might be argued that the film is a posh perspective on what's the middle class fantasy. Which apparently is one in which pretending to be working class and having parents with addiction might garantee you a spot in a circle of rich friends (and then you can exert all your destructive fantasies on them). At the same time, it's not like the upper class gets unscathed from all this. Yes, they're fun and amusing to watch, but I wasn't laughing with them, but at them. They were portrayed as being ridiculous and utterly sad in their inability of showing emotion, seen here as the typical upper class behavior.

Perhaps a more legitimate criticism coming from me (and others) would be that all explained above would have come across more clearly if the execution would have been done right. I do believe there's some issues with the script. The over explaining of motive through a monologue and going back in time was not necessary and it's more like a gimmick, an easy way to close all the narrative ends. It's not technically a bad idea, but perhaps it is too cliche at this point.

I believe Oliver needed a bit more work in terms of motivation and how that comes across. I felt as if there's more to know. Not in a way that justifies his action, but what is underneath there? This is where I'm reminded of some comparisons to The Talented Mr. Ripley, Teorema or Brideshead Revisited. The stranger who comes in and disrupts the status quo. Who changes the lives of those he "befriends", either for personal gain, for them to get out of their "comfort zone" or both. The methods of infiltration are subtle, but most importantly, the way in which they are portrayed in film or written are what makes them so powerful. Emerald Fennell is no Evelyn Waugh, that's obvious. So I think that mostly here lies that criticism on my part. That at times, the story is told too simplistically, it doesn't go too deep into the relationship between characters (especially Oliver and Felix) and there's a superficiality that comes with a focus on aestheticism.

At the same time, this exact latter criticism can actually be its forte. It's what makes it fun. It's the wanted shock value of a few scenes that definitely makes the audience gasp (particularly those in the young adult range nowadays used to comic book adaptions and other Hollywood garbage). It looks beautiful and it makes us nostalgic of summers in the late 2000s which don't look that bad through rose-tinted glasses. It's how we look at ridiculous behavior and also love watching those people bask in the sun and wear dinner jackets while playing tennis. It's the music! I loved the music and the sparkly kitschy clothes us millenials used to think it were the height of fashion.

The film wants to be outrageous, to make people talk, to bring valid criticism while also looking really good. If its problem is that it has too much style over lack of substance, at least they nailed the style.

My watching experience was a really fun one. It doesn't take away from noticing its shortcomings and that also doesn't make me want to only see its fault and not also the elements that work. Saltburn is somewhere in the middle and I do think we need these types of films as well and it's not hard for it to find its appropriate audience.

[96percentdone]

I've been ruminating on fandom lately. Criticizing fandom at all will get you barraged by very defensive fans who will accuse you of hating fun, not understanding creative expression, and being an art snob, and I am about to go a LOT harder than most of the posts I've been exposed to, so in an attempt to preemptively curb that indignance: I like fandom. I have written fanfics, and theory posts, and meta, and I've reblogged countless fanart. A lot of what I engage with or have made meets the standards I'm about to critique, and I understand completely that for many, fandom is a hobby. People would like to escape from the struggles in their lives. They find comfort in the media they love, so they immerse themselves it. It can be hard to make anything in this capitalist hellscape, so if you've achieved something at all, it's a miracle. I get it. I really do. I'm not an art snob; I think it's fine if things aren't that deep, and they're primarily wish-fulfillment. I have some grievances with the critics too, and they'll come up. This post isn't about you specifically; it's bigger. Fandom content suffers a lack of substance because of superficial engagement with the source material.

Many fandom critical posts on this website bring up shipping culture as the reason everything is samey and uninteresting, often referencing ao3 in specific. I sympathize with these posts, I also find shipping prominence can be fairly tedious when you want to read ANYTHING else, but why is it when complain about fandom, we point the finger at fic? Why do we use shorthands like "he would not fucking say that," and drop ao3 tagging conventions, and mention fanfic websites? Have y'all LOOKED at the fan art you reblog? A lot of it is just posing and kissing. If you wanted to analyze it for any further meaning, I don't think you'd get very far. I am not positioning fanfiction as superior; as everyone points out, a lot of it is repetitive and derivative, but let's not pretend that this is a fanfic exclusive issue. We can take it further out! Look at the absolute state of meta. Most analysis is done in service of promoting a headcanon or a ship if it isn't just a theory wildly speculating an explanation for an unresolved or ambiguous plot point. We're gonna include those guys who make power scaling rankings, filling out the wiki, etc too. They're fans! Everyone agrees those people aren't engaging with the text in a deeper way, but that doesn't make them NOT fans. It is the way their appreciation manifests the clearest! We're all fans; we are doing the same thing in just a different form.

Most of what gets popularized I all these spaces is based on a strictly literal understanding of the work; it's about plot events and how characters relate to it and one another, and the meaning people get out of it—from shipping to theorizing to memes to tierlists—never goes beyond that level. If people don't know how to look for themes, to interpret symbolism and examine the construction of a work to see how it contributes to how the whole is operating to affect them, because their education on how to do it sucked shit, then obviously they won't. But I don't think that's enough to explain the heart of the problem.

Critics will bring up the fandom wash cycle, an analogy for how way fandom will spend more time engaged with itself than the source material, and perpetuate its own tropes and fixations ad nauseum. This is true in any fanspace you can spend your time in, including those "who would win" bros. I hear this, and I think of social media, the place most of fandom lives now. People making original work often talk about how their stuff never gets any attention compared to fandom stuff; the biggest fandoms are sprawling franchises with corporate entities behind them. Social media algorithms promote what is already popular, what will generate the most clicks, so you stay online and make their corporate overlords more money. It is the depth of human experience streamlined into easily digestible chunks.

You're spent because life is hard and the world sucks and the only relief you can find is in the media you love. You don't want to expend a lot of energy today, so you'll consume or create ship centered content, or fan theories, or memes and gifs. You'll wonder who would win in a fight. Even without social media, people feed their own algorithms, because the system is designed to encourage it. Fandom is part of a larger whole.

If fandom will ever be more than what it is, you have to be willing to put in the work to fix it. Criticism won't cut it. As the saying goes, be the change you want to see in the world. Create what you want to see, use what you make to teach what might be lacking, seek out more of the things that look like what you want fandom to be (I assure you it exists), not just what you already know. Fandom is perpetuated by fans. Being a fan doesn't make you predisposed to creating cyclical, watered-down content. Every fan has a rich internal life with a whole host of experiences that should inform both how they make their works and how they read it to begin with, because they're people.

People are far too diverse to be defined by an algorithm; maybe with enough effort, we can write a new one.

[loregoddess]

Osvald for the ask meme

Hecking love this guy...

how much I like their personality: Very much, which was a surprise to me. For a variety of reasons, I'm not fond of the "emotionless or emotionally stunted intellectual who prizes their lack of emotion as proof of their intellect (or else the intellectual with an utter lack of understanding of emotion in general)" as a trope (I am not summarizing that trope well, but, y'know, that trope), so I started off a bit wary every time the narrative made it seem like Osvald didn't know what love (or other emotions outside of revenge) were, but his narrative dovetailing into "actually he has known love (and other emotions) all along and just didn't have a name for them bc he was so preoccupied with his research, but actually he has loved and loves very deeply and this is a key aspect of his characterization" was a really nice subversion of my expectations and fears, and as a result Osvald ended up being a really interesting character. I love the duality of his focus on his research and rather blunt way of speaking being juxtaposed with how deeply he actually cares, and how despite at the beginning of his story where he believes himself a hollow shell of a man who can only seek vengeance, that he's actually so full of care for his family and the other travelers, and he actually does understand emotions even if it's not like, in a conventional way and not quite to the same level or type of emotional intelligence as a few of the other travelers. I just think Osvald's a really interesting, great character!

how much I like their design/aesthetics Overall, I love his character design! I think leaving the prison chains around his neck was a weird design decision, esp. after his main story arc is beaten (hey if they could take the cuff thingy off Therion after story completion, Osvald could have gotten some new clothes...), but overall I feel like his design reflects his characterization very well. He has this big, tall, hulking figure, and comes off as rather intimidating at first, which is fitting because he starts off as hellbent on revenge and also he can literally mug people at night, but then we learn that Loving Father is deeply ingrained in his core personality, so that the hulking figure becomes more like that of a protective mother bear (or Juvah, to quote Ochette). I felt like the designers also did a good job having his general appearance change to reflect his life circumstances (i.e. before the murder of his family, his hair is kept tied back, he's always dressed nicely, it's very heavily implied this was partly Rita's work but we still get the sense that his life is "together" as a result; whereas after breaking out of prison his hair is unkempt and he wears his old prison rags because he can no longer focus on living, with all his energy going towards his vengeance quest; and then of course we get how he's dressed in his ending art which I feel speaks for Osvald's entire character arc and growth very nicely). The overall choice for a color palette focused on browns and beiges was a nice touch too, because brown can very easily be made to look like a cold color in certain lighting, but likewise can be a very warm color depending on the light, which reflects the duality of Osvald's characterization very well too. I'm uh, gonna wrap this up here bc character design actually is my passion and we'll be here all day if I try to go over every aspect of his design, but as an artist with an interest in character design, I think Osvald's got a strong design overall and I like it a lot.

how interesting I think they are As stated in different ways above, I think Osvald's very interesting! Would probably write up an entire analysis of his arc and characterization and other stuff if I had the energy and time.

how well-written I think they are Overall I liked Osvald's writing quite a bit. His narrative arc was one of my favorites from the game, and I felt like the story beats and his characterization came through very clearly. I also felt that the turning point in his narrative (Ch4) was one of the strongest narrative turning points out of all the travelers (only being beat out by Castti's for my personal favorite of the mid-story turning points). Despite my love of a good ol' fashioned revenge tale, I was delighted by how Osvald's arc subverted my expectations without any of the plot twists or reveals feeling contrived or out-of-place. Especially on my second run with The Knowledge Of What Happens, I have an appreciation for how his story is being set up and how certain things were hinted at earlier if not outright foreshadowed. Very enjoyable writing overall!

(if applicable) how much I like their mechanics in-game Octo2 has some of the best game mechanics of any jrpg I've played (for my personal tastes), and Osvald's definitely one of my favorite characters to play. He starts off a bit of a glass canon, but with the right setup of equipment he becomes pretty sturdy quickly enough. I like having him in the cleric class because of the access Mystic Staff, and Holy Light is a useful single-enemy offensive skill to use for when Osvald's latent ability isn't full, but he does well in pretty much any class I stick him in, and his personal EX skill is one of my favorite EX skills from the entire game (although as to the divine EX skill well...I've literally never needed to use Teach so uh...that one was more of a miss for me). One of my main damage-dealers in endgame teams, and I used him specifically to churn out high damage hits in the fight with the optional superboss (that's all he did the entire battle), that's how powerful he ended up for me.

if I think they are a Good Person(tm) I'm not really invested in fictional character morality, but sure, even with the mugging and stuff Osvald seems like a decent enough person. Probably wouldn't be one of the main protagonists sort of implied to be chosen by the gods themselves to safeguard the world otherwise.

[cherryrainn]

Hello! could I please get a Helluva Boss matchup? multiple characters are okay, if you think it's fitting or necessary.

I'm 21, non-binary pansexual/romantic, and polyamorous (no preference for gender)

General personality stuff:

MBTI is INFP

Ennegram types 2, 4 and 8

Zodiac Taurus sun, pieces moon and rising

Not sure if appearance matters but- 5'3, chubby and kinda muscular, lots of scars on arms, chest, and legs, brown eyes/hair. Hair is shoulder length, wavy, and usually dyed. Fashion consists of graphic tees (with puns, memes, and trippy art) and jeans or shorts. I'll wear lots of different kinds of jewelry, and don't really have a set aesthetic.

Hobbies/likes- going to the gym, roller skating, playing video games, driving, listening to music (and singing along.. Badly), smoking weed, watching TV shows and movies, hanging out with friends, drawing, Writing, reading, going to museums/amusement parks, taking care of/watching animals, and analyzing media

Positive traits: my friends have told me that I'm smart, funny, sarcastic, polite, thoughtful, strong, patient, trusting/trustworthy, empathetic and compassionate. Pretty self-sufficient and independent/productive. My friends generally come to me for advice and I've been told I'm a good listener. I also like make myself useful (doing dishes, wiping down counters, laundry, etc) I'm passionate and very excitable and it makes me pretty talkative (when I want to be). Sociability depends on my mood. Sometimes I sit back and enjoy group dynamics, other times I participate more in conversation

Negative traits: tendency to be envious. I'm very self conscious/ insecure, and indecisive because of it. Bad habit of taking stuff personally and dwelling on issues that I should let go. can get annoyed/frustrated easily, especially if I'm overstimulated. also jumpy and gullible. Communication is very important to me in all my relationships, but when I get depressed, I tend to isolate.

Diagnoses: depression, anxiety, PTSD, and ADHD

Misc info: When I first meet people, I'm overly formal and will crack a few jokes, but once I'm familiar with someone, I cuss a lot and enjoy playful teasing, but I always encourage to set boundaries if they need to. I collect a lot of stuff. I have a Ton of comfort items- my posters, stuffed animals, collectible figures, etc. I'm a big over thinker. Big on current events and media analysis. I've got lots of vocal stims and am pretty fidgety.

I show my love through acts of service and words of affirmation. I enjoy doing things for my loved ones and making sure they can relax, feel safe, and be happy. I could talk about my friends for hours.

I know this is pretty long, so I apologize if it's overwhelming. Please don't feel pressured to answer. Much love to you 💛

I would pair you with….

Blitzo!

given your personality traits, interests, and preferences, i think you find a great match in blitzo. blitzo is known for his wit, humor, and sarcastic nature. like you, he's talkative, excitable, and enjoys playful teasing. his devil-may-care attitude aligns with your sociability depending on your mood. blitzo’s multifaceted personality, from formality to more casual interactions, resonates with your initial reservedness evolving into comfortable, informal exchanges.

while his hobbies may differ, his passion and energy could mirror your excitable nature.

both of you share a tendency to be envious and a struggle with insecurities.

he will absolutely come to you for advice, considering your empathetic and compassionate nature, friends are likely to come to you for advice. your good listening skills, combined with your thoughtful and patient approach, create a supportive environment for him to open up and seek guidance!!

both of you have your share of struggles—be it your mental health diagnoses or personal insecurities. this common ground could foster a deeper understanding and empathy between you two, making for a more supportive relationship.

blitzo’s sarcastic and has that sharp edge, but deep down, he's got a soft spot for those he cares about. sounds a bit like you, right?

and hey, acts of service and words of affirmation? blitzo might not say it outright, but deep down, he'd appreciate having someone who values connections and shows love through actions.

[numetaljackdog]

I see your point and I'm really willing to agree with most of what you're saying. I admit that dubstep was a kind of meme answer. But if you're really willing to talk about this, then I have to say I simply disagree.

First of all I'm not trying to objectively present anything here. Art is a form of communication and as such can only be perceived subjectively. There is no objective to criticize art. Period.

That being said, you can absolutely apply hierarchy to this if you really wanted to. For example NSBM is a genre. Nazi Black Metal. Because of the statements of this genre, the participants and the aesthetic. It is inherently worth less than other forms of music. Especially since it tries to put other art down. The music itself does have a merit for its target audience and it does reach its intended purpose.

I fully understand where you're coming from with statements like this, because I used to think like this as well, but especially your focus on genres as set categories instead of loose relatives of similar roots and styles, is unhealthy, I think.

for sure this all gets hugely into subjective-land - i think that's pretty inevitable when discussing the rhetoric around anything. i've got my opinion about how we should talk about art, you've got yours, everyone's got theirs, such is how it goes. and i'll grant you that i probably do place too much value in genres as rigid categories! i just love to sort things, i'll admit it. but at the same time, these trends in the creation of music are still "real," in whatever sense one wants to accept, because the music itself is real and we can observe the patterns that exist within what we label as genres. if we stop accepting genres as something we can engage with as though they were more than just a name and a vague gesture, then the whole conversation has to switch to a much smaller scale where we talk about individual artists or even individual releases and the context around them, which can be valuable in its own right but is a different ballgame than the one we've been playing here. my argument is that we shouldn't criticize art by generalizing one genre to be inherently worse than another because it's reductive and unfair. that's all. the nuance that exists within discussion of any given genre remains untouched by my statement and equally as valuable as it would be under any other framework of viewing these topics.

as for NSBM...... that's tough. certainly it's a repulsive thing that exists, and i want to really stress that fact because of what i'm about to say next. so. FUCK ALL NAZIS FUCK ALL FASCISTS. to be clear. now, if we imagine my framework here, where all genres are, when observed in a vacuum, value-neutral with equal potential to produce good music and bad music, then that must include NSBM, right? and unfortunately, it does. because, as we agree, the evaluation and critical analysis of art is necessarily subjective, regardless of whether it's done on the level of the individual or by consensus. so despite the fact that ideologically NSBM is reprehensible, it is possible for a band in the genre to produce a record with a lot of technical skill and passion, and for someone to evaluate that record (again, subjectively) as being "good," if that person happened to be a shithead. evaluation of NSBM (and in fact the genre's existence in the first place) is not a damnation of the genre, because again the issue here is scale as well as subjectivity. it's instead a damnation of the broader political climate and like, the existence of vice within mankind, which is perhaps the most necessary thing out of any of this stuff to have discussions about, but is decidedly outside of the range of topics that i feel qualified to have a full intelligent conversation about in public.

[monimolimnion]

I posted 11,344 times in 2022

That's 4,097 more posts than 2021!

35 posts created (0%)

11,309 posts reblogged (100%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@jollyfanasties

@itsrapsodia

@charmps-you-grickly

@freakinflipflop

@4ragon

I tagged 4,014 of my posts in 2022

#ofmd - 1,064 posts

#wwdits - 917 posts

#queue - 109 posts

#goncharov - 92 posts

#unreality - 74 posts

#seascape tag - 68 posts

#help - 48 posts

#lauren - 46 posts

#drawtectives - 35 posts

#oh my god - 28 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#the day after i saw this post for the first time i hung out with my friends and we had the most cursed conversations in ubers both there and

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Kindred [Chapter 12 + Epilogue]

name: Kindred fandom: Ace Attorney | Gyakuten Saiban pairing: Mitsurugi Reiji | Miles Edgeworth/Naruhodou Ryuuichi | Phoenix Wright wordcount/chapters: 13/13, 96k additional tags: miles adopting pess: the fic!, it'll take a while but we'll get to narumitsu eventually i promise, set during disbarment but no AJ spoilers bc i haven't played it yet, Plot Lite(TM), very mild disbarment-typical angst, Slow(ish) Burn, References to / characters from AAI 1&2 but no major spoilers, COMPLETE!

summary:

Her ears prick up at the sound of his voice, but she doesn’t move. "You'll have to forgive me, I'm afraid. I suspect that I am not very good at this." Miles would feel silly to an extreme for speaking to her like this, except for the way that Pess thaws, ever so slightly - her tail twitches, her head dips a little from its stiff posture, and she huffs out a long breath, heavier than her shallow meter from before. "I'm aware you don't understand me, but I am quite certain that I understand you, Pess, at least a little. And I want you to know you are safe with me in this house, and that this will be your home so long as you are happy here.”

Against his better judgement, Miles Edgeworth adopts a dog.

Read it on AO3!

74 notes - Posted August 8, 2022

#4

not to bang on about it, but i think the Goncharov Phenomenon and the new Defunctland video being released at the same time is kind of. apt?

in the documentary Kevin spends an hour and a half in agony about his existence as a youtuber/artist/documentarian, agony i recognise and deeply resonate with, and comes to the conclusion that work doesnt have to be "great" to be worth it. that seriousness and importance is not something worth trading off joy for. that it's not actually a bad thing necessarily that sketches and memes take off and stuff you worked hard on doesn't, even if it feels bad in the moment

his point being that creativity is worth it even in isolation, that even the "real" virtuosos have no regrets about producing work that is less important, and that it's about whoever you touch with the work, no matter how shallow or simple the work may seem, and no matter how shallow or simple the impact might be on whoever you touched.

you still touched them, didn't you?

i think it's obvious why this resonates with me quite so much - in a fandom context, as well as where that intersects with my work in games, my ideas for novels that might not get anywhere, and what i "should" be doing to be considered a proper writer

and that's why goncharov is such a fantastic fucking example.

the entire POINT of goncharov is that it doesn't mean anything. and because of that, it can mean everything at once. the outpouring of creativity in unison from seemingly all corners of tumblr is no less beautiful because it is couched in memery and an inside joke. the analysis speaks just as much about the context of our zeitgeist as it does the film that doesn't exist. the art, the writing, the music. everyone taking whatever craft they've built for themselves and using it to reach out to each other for no reason other than it's fun.

it is worthy of doing, in and of itself.

my god. humans just need an excuse to create beauty sometimes because we'll do it about fucking anything. and i think that's wonderful

90 notes - Posted November 23, 2022

#3

ok. hear me out. i have thoughts about nandor’s list of ideal wife traits.

ive seen posts that are like 'it's a list of traits guillermo has!' reading it as a nandermo hint, as well as posts that say 'guillermo has the exact opposite of those traits to show that nandor is in denial' and i really don’t think it’s a direct 1:1 of either of those at all

it's pretty clear to me that the list is first of all much more literal than that - the show isn't always trying to indicate something aside from literally what it's talking about (the traits of the wives he re-deaded during the montage) and while i love reading into things as much as the next guy i think this list really was just written to serve the joke more than anything

BUT. but. it's also something that is much more indicative of nandor's inner workings than it is a straight up list of things he likes about guillermo but won’t admit to because, well, let's list the traits -humble, an excellent listener, not petty or slovenly or vain or manipulative, never asked him to shave off his beard, not smarter than him, warm and wanted to be with him (🥺), kind, a good haggler, merciful, horny, and has a sense of spontaneity and fun

to me this reads almost as if it's a classic comphet 'oh i just have high standards' kind of bent thinking. half of the traits seem to actively contradict another item in the list! this is the exact kind of thought pattern that happens when you are so divorced from your actual Self that you don't actually even know what you want - if i just have a reason that every relationship isn't perfect, an excuse for it to never be right, then i don't have to face what is genuinely happening inside me. if i have a formula, then i am safe. 

i would argue that the list is actually three separate things: 1: things nandor genuinely does want in a relationship (which do tend to line up with guillermo's own traits, or the ones he has made most visible during his servitude) 2: things that would be good for nandor’s personal development and therefore he does not want to be challenged on them (especially by a near-stranger as his wives have become to him - the fight scene is the big example here, since his reaction to guillermo in the same context was so different, but also i’m including things like not being smarter than him, etc. these are largely Also traits guillermo has, and are the ones pointed out by the posts arguing that the whole list is about guillermo in negative).  3: the other things are just quibbles because he is a petty little bitch but we been knew that already

to me his total misread of marwa's personality at the end of the episode is so starkly obvious for those exact reasons - he doesn't know what he wants at all, and it's not as simple as his subconscious having all the answers in a direct negative for us to superimpose guillermo on, either. because divorcing yourself from your emotions and anything remotely difficult to process for 400 years is bound to have some sort of impact.

also i am deeply certain that nandor was largely the same (read: an asshole) even while he was still human, too, but that’s a topic for another time

118 notes - Posted July 16, 2022

#2

287 notes - Posted February 3, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

thinking about how nandor calling all his partners wives is a clever way to have him very explicitly handwave heteronormativity and establishes him as someone who doesn't even register the modern sexuality zeitgeist BUT still places him as the sole husband: still centers him as the man of the house, the one waited on hand and foot, the one in charge, and the one ultimately aloof from a relationship that is supposed to be a partnership (there being many wives notwithstanding).

and how if, in the end, guillermo refuses to be nandor's wife and insists on being his husband that it sings in total synergy with the entire storyline thus far - it would be guillermo learning to own himself, his sexuality, his self worth, and refusing to be a doormat, and nandor accepting that change is part of life even when you are undying, and that he cannot always be dominant in order to avoid being vulnerable, and in fact needs a partner that will challenge him

in this essay i won't

1,634 notes - Posted July 17, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[raamitsu]

Hi! So I wanted to participate in your TR manga readers activity for today.

I'll try to keep it short..

1. My thoughts on people who make analysis

I love it! I'm all in for theories and analysis especially when people use a logical approach with reasonable arguments; even if some of those arguments seem far-fetched sometimes. It's food for more thought (can't get enough of that). Even just analysis about small moments in the manga that don't really have a big impact on the story as a whole are nice. Bonus for hilarious theories that have meme potential.

(I also like emotional rants; not nearly as much as the latter but they can get entertaining.)

2. Are TR ships (canon or not) worth the war?

No. I don't count myself as someone who is a shipper nor am I against it, but what irks me is when people (especially grown adults) get tooooo worked up about this. We're talking about fictional characters here, they don't exist- they are just drawn lines. I'll never understand people who genuinely fight over stuff like this. Just look the other way, unfollow them, or even block them if you can't handle their opinion on a ship or a character. But don't go and harass or insult people; that shit is wrong, stupid and worst of all A WASTE OF TIME.

However... I like healthy fights. When you can bounce logical arguments around and either come to a conclusion or go your separate ways concerning the subject. Healthy arguments are a good way to learn from each other on any given subject (if people stay respectful and don't get too many emotions involved). It's not for everyone but I appreciate and enjoy good ol' debates, especially if hilarious jokes are being thrown around.

3. Found good or weird when I joined the fandom

I don't really see myself as someone who is IN any fandom but I got into the TR story and did some posts plus reblogged some TR stuff so I guess I'm kinda "in it" now (surface level though since I prefer to be an observer)? Idk. What I especially liked while checking this fandom out for the first time, was the variety of fanart and the memes. I like art and I like memes so yeah it clicked.

(My first language isn't english so have some mercy on my writing "skills" lol)

Hi !! Thank you for participating and no worries, your English is way better than mine ! 😄✨ Ngl I agreed with almost everything you wrote here, especially the “healthy fight” part 🤣 I mean who doesn’t like that ? When people debate with logic and common sense, it’s like witnessing justice is being upheld (lol). Also, I believe it’s important to point out that there are people who simply want to start a drama because they love it and ngl it annoys me too when they begin to point fingers once they couldn’t handle the situation that they brought upon themselves. Simply by mentioning about things that could’ve triggered people in order to make a war happens, I don’t see how beneficial it is.

[phrootsnacks]

📖 What I Read in 2023 📖

I finished a total of 8 books this year, which is 8 more than I did last year!! :D

(ok yeah the number of books I read in a year is not impressive, but cut me some slack I'm a slow reader, ok??)

this year I read mostly non-fiction, specifically about languages, linguistics, D/deaf culture, science, technology, etc so if those categories interest you, keep reading! Also let me know if you have any recommendations!

here are my recommendations:

Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch

Made to Break by Giles Slade

Translanguaging by Ofelia García and Li Wei

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below are my reviews of all the books I read this year!

Short Stories in Spanish by Olly Richards

For Beginners, Volume One

One of the few fiction books! I can tolerate fiction if it’s in one of my TLs lol

If you read my language studying post from last year, you know I started reading this book in December of last year and my opinions on it are still the same. It was a bit easy for me, but still an enjoyable and relaxing read. The stories are short, light, and straightforward. I found it really helpful that the stories were broken up into chapters and that there were summaries and review questions after each chapter. As a resource for Spanish, it’s pretty good. As for actual stories, however, it’s ehhh. Oftentimes the plot seems to go in random directions, completely unmotivated. Or much time is spent on a specific scene, for it to have no importance whatsoever. And like, I get why it is this way-- it’s to provide as much interesting vocab as possible. 

If you’re learning Spanish and want to improve your reading, I’d recommend it. If you’re looking for good stories, there’s better.

The Art of Language Invention by David J. Peterson

From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building

ok first I have beef with DJP because ACTUALLY verbs are the best part of language and onions are good

fr, this book taught me so much about so many different language concepts. It starts small and then gets bigger, which as a result often reinforces the ideas from previous chapters. I also enjoyed learning about all the linguistic variety there is in the world! The discussion of each concept is brief but thorough enough to get the gist, and is often supported by an example. I go absolutely feral for random language facts, so I greatly enjoyed learning so many tidbits about my own languages and others.

This is a great resource if you’re interested in conlangs or in languages generally, and want a little taste of the possible ways and shapes a language could be. Do not read if you don’t want language spoilers!!

Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch

Understanding the New Rules of Language

this book is ,-~^*`*^~-,wonderful,-~^*`*^~-,

It was so interesting to learn about something I do so unconsciously. I grew up with the internet: talking to strangers on Webkinz, looking at i can has cheezburger memes, texting my friends on an iPod Touch. Reading this book was like reading a history I relate to, a history I have experienced and continue to experience (even if I wasn’t or am not personally there)

This book is also very inspiring and... validating? Like, lil ol’ me can be a linguist? just a little guy on the internet?? can do linguistics??? And the new words and phrases I come across on the internet, and the way I see my own brand of internet speak change, all that is worthy of thought and analysis? Yes, absolutely yes. Studying linguistics always ends up with me seeing everyday interactions thru a new lens, and this book definitely encouraged this lens to point at my own interactions on the internet.

Introduction to American Deaf Culture by Thomas K. Holcomb

I really enjoyed learning about Deaf culture-- the art, the language, the solutions for effective living, the community, etc. Because I'm hearing and don't personally know any D/deaf people, it was very eyeopening to learn about this community and its history.

Before I read this book, I would have logically assumed that of course, D/deaf people have their own way of interacting with the world, their own culture, their own perspectives. Like, obviously, yeah. But it's a whole other thing to actually learn about it and read about it and see evidence of it!!

Overall, this book covers a lot of ground, but still remains quite surface level and doesn't get too into the weeds-- it really is an introduction. But, it provides some interesting frameworks, which I find useful when thinking about other marginalized groups and their unique cultures and struggles-- especially as it concerns disability. So even if you don't have any particular ties to the Deaf community or Deaf culture, this book is still an interesting and informative read.

It is... it is a textbook, tho.

Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks

Another book about D/deafness! this one is a short read but still goes into depth in a few topics. specifically, about how important language is neurologically (of which unfortunately some D/deaf people are deprived,) the effect of sign language on the capabilities and structure of the brain, and the change over time in the recognition of Deaf culture and Deaf identity.

Being a language nerd, I especially enjoyed learning about how revolutionary language is for thought and about how the brain adapts and changes due to the use of sign language.

Overall this book is pretty good, tho there are some... weird things that I didn't like about it: a few ableist slurs, maintaining a medical model of deafness, a fascination with D/deaf people and culture in a way that feels exoticizing... this book was published in 1989, whereas Introduction to American Deaf Culture was published in 2012, so maybe this weirdness is just ~of that time~ but also Sacks was hearing. there are probably things about Deaf culture Sacks just couldn't understand because he wasn't deaf himself. All this said, I'm also hearing so take my opinion of these books with a grain of salt. Maybe the weirdness in Seeing Voices isn't so bad and I'm overreacting, maybe it's a lot worse than I realize. If you've read it, let me know what you thought!

Made to Break by Giles Slade

Technology and Obsolescence in America

I really liked this book. the first eight chapters are all just the history of obsolescence in America, and it was super interesting to learn about how this idea applied to so many different products and various time periods. admittedly, I struggle to read / learn history, but because the topic is centered around something I'm already interested in it wasn't a drag. I also like how it was written-- I think focusing on stories about individual people and cultural trends kept it from being too dry or impersonal. at some points I would wonder "how does this connect to obsolescence?" but then there would be a reveal! like wow! I did not see that coming!

(also super interesting learning about the history of FM radio vs TV and computers and chips as an electrical engineer bc it's like hey! I know that guy! he was in my textbook! oh shit how did he die? oh god that's fucked up wow)

the last chapter focuses on electronic waste and makes some predictions about the future, and since this book was published in 2006, I'm really interested in looking into what the status of this problem is now. obviously, the themes of obsolescence are still prevalent today in various markets and products and it's... frustrating but necessary to learn about. you have to learn about it to know that it's a problem, and to know how to move forward.

(also also, the physical quality of the book is really nice. like very often I turned the page and had to check I didn't accidentally turn two pages, because the paper is nice and thick. idk I think that's very fitting for the themes of the book lol)

Chaos by James Gleick

Making a New Science

I liked this book? it simultaneously feels like this book is for laypeople (ie people who have not studied systems and higher level math and whatnot) but also like I am not smart enough for this book (despite having studied systems and higher level math and whatnot.) I don't know, it hit a weird balance of not explaining too much so you don't get overwhelmed by information, but also it doesn't explain enough for you to really fully get it.

I think I liked this book. like it's interesting and I enjoyed learning about all the different fields this... chaos math... applies to... but also? this book was published in 1987 so idk if it's really all that applicable to systems / models / various fields today. like I haven't studied it in any of my classes, but also all my classes have focused on linear systems and have hand waved non-linear systems. so like, either I haven't studied it yet, or chaos really isn't that important of a field?

idk I like the pure math aspects of it, and this book has some really nice visuals. like the color pages of the Mandelbrot set! I liked that! besides that maybe I should read some more recent chaos literature lol lmk if you have suggestions

Translanguaging by Ofelia García and Li Wei

Language, Bilingualism and Education

I really enjoyed this book! it's short but insightful and (I would say) a thorough read about translanguaging. the first part discusses theories about language and bilingualism, and explains what translanguaging is and how it's distinct from other terms. from my understanding, here is what translanguaging is: while specific features may be defined as belonging to one Language or another (ie "table" belongs to English and "mesa" belongs to Spanish,) for a bilingual / multilingual speaker these features all constitute one linguistic repertoire. then, translanguaging is to use all of one's linguistic repertoire, crossing the imaginary boundaries between Languages in order to facilitate or do (something)

that something can be education, as described in part two! i think education is really important, so I was very interested to learn more about bilingual / multilingual education. this part gives a lot of examples of translanguaging in practice in the classroom, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I think the fact that people translanguage, in contexts where it isn't encouraged to contexts where it's explicitly discouraged, indicates that Languages are not really separate or distinct in people's minds, despite the labels we give them and how we talk about them.

neurolinguistic speculation aside, it was really interesting to see how translanguaging was used to achieve a variety of goals-- learning content, developing new language features, maintaining old language features, developing critical thinking, etc etc. it made me reflect on my own language education experiences and how I've used (or failed to use) translanguaging to learn and to teach. seriously-- how many classes have I been in where there is a strict target-language only policy? I get the motivation, but as evidenced by the book it can restrict a student's ability to ask questions and think critically if they can't use their entire linguistic repertoire.

overall I liked this book a lot! it gave me a lot of new ways of thinking on some of my favorite subjects-- specifically languages, linguistics, and education.

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Books I'll keep reading in 2024

these are some of the books I started but did not finish this year, however I plan to keep reading them next year! I have a bad habit of reading way too many books at one time, but then the books I'm borrowing from the library get prioritized so I end up not finishing some stuff,,,, so here are those books too! :D

Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom by bell hooks

New Penguin Parallel Texts: Short Stories in Spanish edited by John R. King

Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos

Exploring Language (Third Edition) edited by Gary Goshgarian

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Whoa! A DNF list too!

this is the one book I read but did not finish and currently do not plan to finish; Exploring Language (Third Edition) might end up here too because I did not realize how dated it was until I started reading it lol

Tubes by Andrew Blum

A journey to the Center of the Internet

I really wanted to like this book! I'm actually really interested in the topic, about internet history and internet infrastructure and how it all works (and especially, how this technology tends to only benefit the most privileged at the expense of those less privileged.) but I just really didn't like the style of writing. it asked a lot of questions, it got repetitive, and it was too personal for my taste. I guess I didn't really get what this book was trying to be-- I'm more interested in the facts and the technology than I am in Blum's personal roadtrip and interactions with people. it also felt so very... capitalistic. like "cool! these companies own all this technology and they're making a killing off of it! they're doing such a good thing for the world!" and I just,,, I don't intend to return to this book. it's not for me. oh also? this book was published in 2012 and internet is spelt capitalized (as "Internet") which is strange to me. I guess I don't know exactly when people stopped capitalizing it, but I thought it was earlier than 2012? idk

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wa you reached the end here is a lil treat 🍰

[iamsumati]

The Art of Influencing: Beyond and Beneath the Glitter

Oh, the internet, that glorious place where anyone with an opinion and an iPhone can become an "influencer." It's a marvel to witness the ever-increasing number of variants in this influential ecosystem. In fields like finance, health, and many new, unheard-of areas that seem to pop up every day, these self-proclaimed experts are spreading their gospel of wisdom. How fortunate we are!

These influencers, or as I like to call them, "saviors of the ignorant," have made it their divine mission to enlighten the masses. Armed with their obsessive thoughts and opinions on their chosen topics, they've become the messiahs we didn't know we needed. Who needs traditional education, peer-reviewed research, or actual experts when we have Joe from Instagram sharing his unique insight into quantum physics, right?

The best part is that these influencers, in their benevolence, have mastered the art of subtly undermining the very foundations of what people believe in. It's like they've read George Orwell's "1984" and thought, "Hey, Big Brother had it all wrong. Let's redefine reality on Instagram!"

You see, the idea that critical thinking and influence go hand in hand is utterly misleading. Why bother with nuanced analysis, fact-checking, or considering different perspectives when you can just listen to Jenny from YouTube passionately explain how the Earth is flat and NASA has been hiding it from us all these years?

But what's even more amusing is how these influencers manipulate our understanding of trust and credibility. They might not have a medical degree, but they sure can suggest home remedies for every ailment under the sun. And who cares about those boring financial advisors when you can invest your life savings in cryptocurrency based on Jake's enthusiastic Twitter rants?

In all seriousness, the rise of influencers in various fields is a double-edged sword. While some genuinely provide valuable information, many are guilty of perpetuating misinformation and preying on the gullible. So, remember, next time you're tempted to take financial advice from someone who uses "To the moon!" as their investment strategy, think twice. And perhaps, just perhaps, consult a professional who didn't get their knowledge from a meme.

It’s fascinating how influencers can craft a captivating narrative around their lives, transforming mundane activities into epic tales of inspiration. And what about the modern-day philosophers who bestow their profound wisdom upon us in 15-second TikToks? Forget Plato and Aristotle; we have those guys, who can provide deep insights into existentialism between dance breaks. Clearly, Socrates was just lacking in dance moves.

Let’s not forget the ever-popular wellness influencers who advocate for all-natural, organic living while promoting their line of overpriced “miracle” products. You see, it’s not about the science; it’s about the Instagram-worthy packaging and the promises of eternal youth. Who cares about evidence-based medicine when you can buy “moon dust” to sprinkle on your salads?

And the absolute cherry on top is the mysterious emergence of “experts” in brand-new areas that didn’t exist a year ago. It’s as if influencers have a magical ability to tap into the zeitgeist and instantly become authorities on topics that seasoned professionals have spent years studying. Move over, historians; here comes the one , the overnight expert in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

In conclusion, while influencers can be entertaining and, in some cases, informative, it’s essential to approach their content with a healthy dose of skepticism. As they say, not everything that glitters on Instagram is gold. Before blindly following the digital pied pipers of our time, let’s take a step back, question the authenticity of their expertise, and reflect on the impact of this influencer-dominated culture on the integrity of knowledge and our society as a whole.

[sciencestyled]

We’re The Chosen Ones: A Laughable Encounter with Our Almost-Extinct Ancestors!

Ladies, gentlemen, and esteemed guests of the internet, we’ve stumbled upon an artifact, a gem, a revelation so immense, it makes the discovery of King Tut’s tomb look like finding loose change under the sofa.

Apparently, 900,000 years ago, we, yes WE, the stately beings gracing the Earth with our enlightened presence, almost got wiped off the face of the planet. Sounds like a melodramatic screenplay, but darling, this is the cinema of life, and it’s as real as the nose on your face.

And guess who’s spilling the post-apocalyptic tea? None other than the archer-extraordinaire, the Girl on Fire herself – Katniss Everdeen. Who better to narrate the saga of human resilience than the queen of survival?

So, we almost froze and starved our way into extinction. Now, you’re probably picturing a handful of cavemen and cavewomen, shivering, gnashing their teeth, dramatically falling to their knees in the snow. A cinematic masterpiece! But they, like the champions they were, clung to life with the tenacity of a cat on a drapery. The OG Hunger Games champions!

There was a big chill – not the friendly gathering of college buddies, but a Stone Age cold snap, fiercer than the iciest of winters. Did we mention this brutal onslaught was accompanied by droughts? Nature was clearly not in a forgiving mood. Ah, but much like Katniss’ masterful evasion of danger, a merry band of our ancestors danced through the icy blades of extinction, and here we are, their proud descendants, armed with smartphones, and an insatiable appetite for memes.

How did this come to light, you ask? Well, amidst the manuscripts and echoing halls of academia, a scholarly soul named Wangjie Hu and their team of brainiacs constructed a statistical masterpiece, a method so refined, it would make Sherlock Holmes tip his hat. Their analysis of our sacred DNA whispered the secrets of an age when we teetered on the brink of non-existence. Elementary, my dear Watson!

But wait, hold your horses! Before you ink that survivor tattoo, know this - not every academic is singing this swan song. A duo of dissent, Schiffels and Kelso, have arched a skeptical brow at the narrative. A refreshing spritz of controversy to spice up the academic casserole!

Now, as we raise our perfectly sculpted brows at the unfolding drama of our almost-extinction and subsequent rise, let’s not forget the chilly ghost of climate change that lurks in the shadows. We escaped the icy grasp of death once, but darling, even sequels can pack a punch.

Our journey of discovery is akin to a rollercoaster ride through an enchanted forest, where secrets lie buried, and revelations spring like mystical springs. Katniss has flung the doors wide open to a past where we danced with extinction, pirouetted on the edge, and lived to tell the tale.

So pop the popcorn, pull up a chair, and let’s marvel at the epic tale of our ancestral Hunger Games, where every day was a dance with death, and survival wasn’t just a game, but an art form, painted with the brushes of resilience, courage, and an unyielding zest for life. We’re not just the audience; we are the living, breathing sequels to an epic we’re only beginning to understand.

And as the credits roll and the echoes of our tumultuous past fade into the silent hum of the present, remember - we are the chosen ones. Born from the ashes, destined for greatness, and armed with the unrivaled legacy of warriors who stared down the abyss and whispered, "Not today."

Mic drop. Curtain falls. Encore awaits.

[coquelicoq]

For the letter ask, can you do the letter M?

i love magnets because of that tumblr post that says no one really understands magnetism. i don't know if that's true, but it reminds me of one of my favorite things about science, which is the awareness that we only know a fraction of what there is to know. (my other favorite thing is about science is the curiosity and drive to know more than we do currently.) magnets are also fun because of the whole "opposites attract" thing, which is a cliche for a reason. also i love magnets because they allow me to stick my siblings' photos and the art they drew for me when they were little to my fridge <3

i love my tag #me when i discovered narwhals and hope to have many more opportunities to use it in the future.

i love malaphors and mondegreens and memes. i love the way our brains connect things to make new things, often on accident, and i love it when the new things are funny.

i love the moon. oh, how i love the moon. i love how lonely she is and yet how every time i look at her i know someone else is looking at her too. i love that there's just this huge body that appears in the sky every few weeks, wherever i am, and she's been doing that for eons. like, there's nothing else i can see from inside of my house that is that ancient. there's nothing else i can see on a regular basis that i know billions and billions of other people have also seen. i love how she's not visible all the time so that when she is, i still feel excited about it. i love that she can't see me back and that she doesn't care about me or about anything at all. i love my playlist of songs about the moon. i love using she/her pronouns for the moon. i love how she protects us from asteroids! when i think about the tides i get incredibly fucked up about it. we're a system! we affect each other!!!!!

speaking of. i love mutualism and mutual aid. i love that we want to help. i love that we want to be helped. i love that we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. i love that we want to belong and to contribute.

i love it when things are meta, by which i mean i love it when things are self-referential. i love it the way i love autology, when something is an example of what it describes. i also love what tumblr calls meta, fan analysis of shows and books and whatnot, but who doesn't??

i love math. i love that math is systematic and reliable but i also love it for the exact opposite reason...i love math because it's so complex, because it's so unfinished, because it's so unpredictable. because what it's describing is complex and unfinished and unpredictable! i love the t-shirts my friends and i made in math club in high school (i, my imaginary friend) and these very bad math pickup lines i made to impress a beloved mutual.

i love mortality. i love knowing that i am mortal. i love knowing that existence is change, that things come to an end, that entropy is natural.

i love that mourning and morning are homonyms. i love that life goes on but i am changed. i love the things in life that are cyclical, that remind me that i'm part of the great turning of all things.

i love the word maybe. i love that it's a verb phrase turned into an adverb. i love the hope inherent in it. i love that you never know. you never know.

[theculturedmarxist]

It’s hard to miss the signs these days—the hammer and sickle emoji on Twitter profiles, the kitschy Soviet art populating online memes, and left-wing analysis sympathizing with authoritarian states like China or Syria.

It’s all part of a seeming comeback of “tankie” or “campist” politics—a tendency that, once upon a time, uncritically aligned with the Soviet Union and other enemies of the United States, in the name of the struggle against imperialism.

Its revival today, according to intellectual historian Barnaby Raine, is animated by new cultural and emotional features: pessimism about a liberatory future and nostalgia for a rose-coloured past, fantasies about long-sought-after power for the left, and defiance of the taboos of a liberal capitalist order that has pitched us into ecological and economic crises.

Raine is a lecturer at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a PhD student at Columbia University whose doctoral research focuses on the decline of thinking about the end of capitalism. He has written for The Guardian, n+1, and Novara, and is an editor with the journal Salvage.

Raine was interviewed by ecosocialist writer and activist David Camfield on the influence and origins of contemporary campism. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I think we should start by defining some of the terms that we’re going to be focusing on since they’re not familiar to everybody. The first one is “campism”. And then the other one would be “tankie.” Could you give us some working definitions?

Campist politics makes a certain kind of claim about deflection: it reads class struggles, the bread and butter of Marxist politics, as overwhelmingly deflected into struggles between states.

So if you want to understand the world of class struggle in the 20th century, the older style campists basically said, “the real class struggles are actually deflected away from being worker vs boss in New York or London, and into the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. Geopolitics is the real terrain of struggle.” The United States led the “imperialist camp”; the Soviet Union led the “anti-imperalist camp.”

Born in the communist parties, you can already begin to imagine how this develops—where the interests of socialism are identified with the interest of the Soviet Union—because this is the kind of worker’s paradise that enthralls you if you’re a socialist in 1917 or 1920 who watches the birth of the first workers’ state. And so the interests of the Soviet Union come to be synonymous with the interests of socialism, and the defense of the Soviet Union comes to be synonymous with the defense of socialism.

I think the ground zero is not actually 1956—when the term “tankie” is first thrown around, to describe supporters of the Soviet tanks that rolled into Hungary—but earlier. It’s Molotov Ribbentrop, when the Soviet Union signs a pact with Hitler and the Nazi state, the opposition to which has been the premise of socialist politics in the 1930s. Suddenly, the Nazi state is allied with the state to which you as a Communist Party member are loyal. The state which has imprisoned the Communist Party leadership in concentration camps now has its foreign minister shaking hands and smiling with the foreign minister of the Soviet Union. And at that moment, some communists break away and are horrified, while others say that the interests of the Soviet Union are the interests of world socialism. And so you begin to see their ability even to endorse a pact with fascism.

That kind of logic whereby we need to defend the Soviet Union, even if it’s a bit ugly to defend them, explains how you get to a position like 1956 in Hungary. You have what Hannah Arendt called the only freely operating Soviets in the world—workers in a revolution in Hungary taking the kind of power that Lenin once smiled so fondly on—and then you have Soviet tanks rolling in to crush that experiment. And then in Prague in 1968, a Czechoslovak socialism with a human face is crushed by Soviet tanks—even more shocking in a sense, because the Czechs didn’t even want to leave the Warsaw Pact.

That’s an old fashioned 20th century campism. Today, of course, the Soviet Union is gone, and the term tankie is now sometimes used to describe a kind of nostalgic, sentimental politics that looks upon the Soviet Union as a gorgeous, wonderful thing. It often has a kitsch aesthetic of, you know, wanting to decorate our rooms with old Soviet art.

But sometimes it’s also used to describe support for today’s tanks, which claim to be the vanguard against global capitalism. And they might be the tanks of the Assad regime, or the re-education camps of the Chinese state in Xinjiang against Uyghur people. Support for these other massive bureaucratic behemoths—autocratic dictatorships to which some ascribe this kind of anti-imperialist virtue—is still a campism in the sense that it thinks that class struggle is deflected onto struggles between different camps of states. But it’s much more pessimistic. It’s not a form of starry-eyed faith in a distant paradise. It’s not like the people joining the Communist Party in the ‘30s, who really believed that the Soviet Union was the only power that had weathered the Great Depression.

I think this is a politics that in some cases, says, Bashar Al Assad is marvellous and he’s creating a gorgeous society in Syria, or that Gaddafi did the same in Libya until the West got rid of him. Or it says: look, the Chinese state has lifted more people out of poverty, which is to repeat a line from apologists for capitalism.

But the more dominant thread is that lots of people, I think, on the western left are inclined to sympathy with these kinds of states not because they think these states are building a majestic New Paradise, but because they think there’s nothing else. Because in a world in which American imperialism seemed—in the language of the New World Order of the 1990s—to run hegemonic rampant across the earth with no antagonist, they look to these states for some small crumbs of opportunity in the possibility of resisting the global tide of American dominance. So I think of this as a kind of left Fukuyamaism. Francis Fukuyama famously talked about the end of history, and Slavoj Žižek has this mocking term about a left Fukuyamaism to describe the third way of political figures like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, who accepted that end of history—and their socialism wasn’t really about trying to end or transform capitalism at all.

Well, I don’t think people like Blair and Clinton deserve any kind of left label. The people who understand themselves as being on the left, who are actively part of left campaigns, and who’ve really accepted an End of History narrative, are I think those people who don’t believe we can do any better than the defense of states like China, Syria, Cuba, and sometimes even North Korea, as building blocks in a feeble global antagonism against the overwhelming dominance of American power.

So this is a pessimistic campism, not an optimistic campism. There were certainly pessimists among the members of the Communist Party who didn’t think the Soviet Union was a glorious place, but who thought it was necessary to defend it. But broadly, there’s been a shift from a form of optimism to a form of pessimism in campist politics.

While there are some people who would be happy with the term “tankie,” and they use it to describe themselves, I think that’s not really the case with campism, right? I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered anyone who was prepared to self describe that way. Could you say something about how people today tend to self-identify?

Oh, I don’t know. I mean, the term campism is certainly often used critically by those who come from the left tradition of the Trotskyist third camp, which, in one slogan said it was “Neither Washington nor Moscow.” Whether they were trade unionists in America striking against their bosses, or whether they were trade union Solidarity in Poland striking against the Stalinist state, it was very much an aspirational politics and an attempt to forge a third camp that claimed a unity of the oppressed and exploited all over the world, which in practice was often hard to forge. I think there are people who wouldn’t object to the term “campist” being applied to them—they really think there are two camps in world politics.

But along the lines of this kind of pessimistic reading I’m ascribing to them, I think they would claim to be the more pragmatic and realistic socialists. This is the kind of label that Zizek’s left Fukuyamaists—the third way of the Blairites and Clintonites—adopted for themselves: ‘We’re the pragmatic realists who accept the truth of global market dominance and don’t really believe anymore in this starry eyed stuff about socialist transformation.’

Well, here are the people who really claim to still be part of the left, who really do want to enact a wave of mass nationalizations in western countries, and who really do want to jack up taxes against the wealthy. But they get to claim that they’re the pragmatic realists because they are aligned not to some distant hope of revolution that’s never succeeded. “Can you name a country where socialism has succeeded?” says the right-wing with a sneer. Well, they can name lots of nations that they regard as at least worthy of support, if not ideal. So I think they would tend to use the language of sober-eyed realism, having claimed it from the right and from liberals.

Do you want to say more about how this kind of political critique is situated in a broader political perspective? And how do you think one best responds to campist politics?

I think the critique for me requires a critique of social democracy, too. Because it is a question of recovering a 19th century tradition that had its apex with the Paris Commune. This is a world in which most states have quite small bureaucratic apparatuses. When Lenin says, “Any cook can govern,” he’s thinking about a bureaucratic apparatus that’s quite simple and small, and run by a tiny number of people. When Marx says the state is the “executive committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie,” it might seem strange to us today. But in 1848, this is not a world of universal suffrage, or of states that provide massive health care programs and education programs. In the 19th century, states are small forces that arrive to break up strikes.

Of course, in the early 20th century, things are quite different. It’s a world of universal suffrage in many parts of Europe, which is the firmament for this redefinition of the left. And so the national state increasingly becomes the instrument to use in the management and supersession of capitalism, which is identified now with something called the economy. And that whole language of the economy isn’t a language that exists in the 19th century. So the economy becomes the staging ground for the split between left and right.

The question of state intervention in the economy becomes the key test for the left. Whether you’re a social democrat, or a Stalinist supporter of the Soviet Union, you’ve got a coherent language for thinking about socialism as a kind of statism and a management of economic difference, and as an attempt to guide yourself toward economic equality.

All of that is quite far from the idea of capital as a form of domination by the boss over the worker. It’s a different kind of politics than a socialist politics premised on freedom and power and the abolition of status hierarchies. For Marx, the development of a genuine individuality is held back by our conscription into different parts of the division of labor.

This is very different from a socialism of state management, which doesn’t have such lofty aspirations as the flourishing of our free individuality—or, if it keeps those aspirations, reserves them for a very distant future. But in the immediate future, it wants to give us bread, and give us schools and hospitals. Especially during the Great Depression, this seems like an urgent promise that socialists claim to deliver, and that capitalists can’t.

So I think that my criticism and my skepticism about this kind of politics is how firmly it follows that redefinition of socialism into the space of the economy. It gives up the promise of popular power, which of course is not a promise you can ever realistically claim is realized by either the big bureaucracies of social democratic welfare state societies or the dictatorial bureaucracies of Stalinist societies.

I think contemporary campism makes another move and redefines the left-right split, but not in the space of the economy—because the Chinese state isn’t really delivering economic equality, and certainly neither is the neoliberal state in Syria, for example. Instead, geopolitics becomes the staging ground for the left-right split. Where do you stand on the question of American interests in the world and America’s ability to wage war to get cheap oil? Where do you stand on the ability of the Israeli state to harass and abuse the Palestinian people?

These become the definitive questions, rather than questions of freedom and power, which should of course incorporate firm opposition to imperialism of the American or Israeli kind in the name of universal freedom.

So that means that we need two different kinds of critique: one for the optimistic campist, and one for the pessimistic campist. For the optimistic campist who thinks that the Soviet Union is a marvelous place, for instance, we point out that Soviet society maintained alienation and domination by abstract labor—which is core to capitalist modernity—and that it was a Fordist mode of production premised on industrial accumulation. Not a society in which the free development of each was the condition for the free development of all, but the central kind of brutal domination that capital ensures.

But I think it’s actually harder to approach the critique of pessimistic campists because there’s a grain of truth that is indeed true: we don’t live in a world with some emancipatory possibility immediately before us. If we did, it would be easy to dismiss their defenses of states around the world by saying, “look, here’s this alternative, we have a global revolution.” We should acknowledge the grain of truth that they’re seizing on; their pessimism is grounded in the reality that it’s difficult to conceive of bigger historical transformations.

But of course, it’s a circular kind of paranoia that says there is no politics possible but the defense of my state. Any politics that does develop, like when revolution breaks out in Syria, can only be read through the categories of either the defense of my state or the imperialist opposition to my state. So when young people in Syria scrawled graffiti on a wall demanding the downfall of the regime, and then they are tortured in prisons, campists say that they’re just imperialist agents. When workers in Cuba are concerned about a year of economic brutality caused by both the imperialist American blockade and the collapse of tourism revenues—because of COVID and by mismanagement by a bureaucratic elite that lives a more luxurious life than ordinary Cubans—they can only be imperialist agents. It’s a circular argument that insists on the truth of a lack of emancipatory alternatives. It therefore crushes any ability to see emancipatory alternatives—even in the tiny embryonic form they develop—because it reads all politics as a conflict between imperialism and anti-imperialist states. Just like the original Soviet-apologist campism did, it utterly gives up on the possibility of trying to hone a socialism of popular power and freedom to which I think we should be loyal.

That kind of politics is as firm as campism in opposing imperialist domination, but we oppose imperialist domination because it’s a form of power and subjugation that violates the promise of freedom to which socialists are loyal. So we oppose, for example, the American blockade on Cuba, but we don’t oppose it in the name of defending the state that these imperialists oppose. Instead, we oppose it in the name of supporting a politics of human freedom against imperialist power, above all, but also against those perverted and deflected forms of supposedly socialist politics that are bureaucratic states.

I want to talk a little bit about the growth of campist politics on the left. I think these politics were very strong in a certain form until the fall of the Stalinist states in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the USSR at the end of the 1980s, early 1990s. Those events really dealt a serious blow to Stalinism and campism, after which they generally declined. But I think we’ve seen a growth of their influence on the left, at least in relative terms. I’ve heard some in the US argue that these politics are not relatively stronger—they’re only stronger in absolute terms, because the entire left has grown. But I’m not persuaded by that. Certainly within Canada, I think this kind of politics has become relatively stronger. So what’s your assessment in terms of the relative strength of these politics on the left?

I think you’re absolutely right that they are relatively stronger, but it is hard to measure. Both of our senses are anecdotal. I recently had an article about this that I sent to various people who responded by asking if I could provide evidence that this kind of politics is rising. And I said, well, I can give you a list of podcasts that reflect this kind of politics, that are clearly getting lots of listens at the moment. I can give you a list of influential people on social media. It’s hard to have much more of a sense than that. But you know, if you go and hang out on the left and talk to people, I think the kinds of politics you hear are different now than they were 10 years ago.

That’s my sense of things in Canada. Can you say some more about the growth of this politics and people’s attraction to it?

I think it’s about emotion, it’s about style, not just all about the content of its claims. The centrality of affect is something which is often missed by critics on the left, who just want to have old fashioned arguments about how bad Stalin really was.

I think there is a parallel to something like Trumpism here. One of the things that liberals like to be terrified about in the years of Trump in America was the emergence of a “Serious Trump.” People focused on the congressman Josh Hawley: “Oh, dear, what if there was a Trump who emerged who wasn’t such a joke figure but who was really serious about his fascism?” I always found this strange because I thought that part of Trump’s appeal was that he was a joke figure. That is to say, he broke taboos.

And I think that breaking taboos amid an experience of the failure of the social order that constructed those taboos is the appeal of the alt-right, and of that contemporary new campism. The two unspeakable, unmentionable demons of liberal democratic society are Nazism and Stalinism. So to embrace either of those—where you stand at the front of a meeting hall and shout “hail Trump” as Richard Spencer did, or say “I love Marshal Zhukov and the parades in Red Square,” as lots of meme pages do on Facebook—is to deliberately shock.

Because you feel that the order that tells you these things are unacceptable is an order that has left you with rising rents, fewer job prospects, and a future that is vanishingly difficult to grasp—unlike the world of the baby boomers, who could believe in a kind of future.

So it’s a turn back to idealize the most provocative possible past in the face of the increasing inaccessibility of faith in the future, which liberal democracy claims to be giving you. I think that’s a key condition for understanding it. And if you don’t understand that its affect is central to it, I think you won’t understand some of the rise of this kind of politics on the left, where it takes a more deliberately provocative form.

More basically, I think it’s an escape from a kind of twin condition on the left: the hegemony’s certainty that nothing else is possible, which people are trying to run away from while still believing it. I don’t blame them. It’s very difficult not to believe that we’ve reached the end of history.

So it’s an attempt to find other forms of society that were possible after all, and which no one can dispute. Someone might dispute the possibility for some radical 1990s leftist to idealize the Zapatistas; someone might come along and say, well, “is that kind of politics that’s likely to run huge societies of millions of people?” No one can dispute that the Soviet Union once ran a huge society of millions of people, or that China does today.

So it’s an attempt to escape a kind of pessimistic hegemony that says absolutely nothing is possible but liberal democratic capitalism.

Crucially, it’s also an attempt to escape what Mark Fisher famously called the “vampire castle,” a form of radical politics amid capitalist hegemony that would retreat into safe spaces in an unsafe world and would come with a suffocating moralism and masochism. It sees radical politics as a matter of tiny groups of people checking the privilege of their friends and neighbours. This is the scathing way of talking about that politics that I think contemporary campism would adopt.

They say, actually, we want to feel powerful again. Campism says: “we don’t want to feel like we’re the people in a room, endlessly checking our own privilege, endlessly trying to purify our own souls. We want to feel like we’re the people at the front of a huge parade of tanks, we want to feel that we can have a left that is powerful.” You’ll see how this is, again, affective.

I think it’s a desire for power, a desire to feel important, a desire to feel that something might be possible beyond the stultifying, tiny worlds of pessimistic identity politics. It is a desire for a left that seems to frighten and to scare the real powers of the world. Whatever you think of him, Stalin certainly did that. And the vampire castle doesn’t do that very much.

Given this affective dimension of politics, can we also situate the appeal of campism more broadly in terms of the moment in history that we’re living in? And what this tells us about our times?

One of the first important things is that this form of politics resurges in a moment where politics is heavily about the past, not the future.

Campism is not just about support for present dictatorial and bureaucratic and autocratic states, but about the attempt to rescue and claim for ourselves the legacy and the image of those past places like the Soviet Union above all. This tells us that we’re in a moment unlike the 1980s and the 1990s when liberals and the right had a politics of the future and the left wanted to as well. Instead, we’re in a moment when politics is overwhelmingly about nostalgia, amid a feeling of decline in the west.

We’ve gone from “Morning in America” under Ronald Reagan, to “Make America great again,” under Trump; we’ve gone from “things can only get better” under Tony Blair, to “take back control” under the Brexiteers—a sense that politics is about the recovery of something glorious which has been lost.

That sense is felt on the right—that “we used to rule the world, and now we’re taking orders from someone else.” It’s felt on the left, too. On the social democratic left you see a huge outpouring of excitement in Britain about Ken Loach’s “The Spirit of ’45,” which imagines a post-war world now lost to us that was supposedly glorious.

And so I think that contemporary campism with its nostalgia for Soviet societies is one form of left politics that emerges in a moment where politics is overwhelmingly geared towards the past, in the absence of a kind of hope about the future. And I also think it’s important to name—alongside Mark Fisher’s famous diagnosis of capitalist realism—an inability to think well beyond capitalism. I think it’s important to name a problem of imperialist realism, an inability to think well beyond imperialism so that all you can do if you’re opposed to American imperialism is take a different side in the inter-imperialist conflicts.

You look at Syria, for example, and see not a revolution which offers some hope of a future democratic society. If you’re in thrall to imperialist realism, all you can ever see is conflict of imperialism—which, of course, is absolutely there in Syria but is not the totality of what’s going on.

So you see a conflict between, on the one hand, Israel, America, Turkey and the Gulf states, and on the other hand, Russia, Iran—above all, Hezbollah as Iran’s agent—and China. So you can only take a side in that conflict.

It’s trying to claim the mantle of a hardheaded realism from liberals and the right. It’s refusing to be the stargazing kids. It says: “You know, you think you’re the real cynics. I’m the one who will defend millions of deaths. I’m the real cynic. I understand millions of deaths.” It’s trying to find an outlet for those undead desires scorned as infantile, to break all the rules, and to believe that everything could be different.

And so I think, contemporary campism reflects this tension between an extreme kind of pessimism, and a desperation to feel a certain kind of optimism, to just allow yourself to believe in something and to give doubt a rest for a moment, and to believe that there might be a better world out there somewhere. It’s in the inhabiting of this space of tension—between a pessimism that I think is pretty well grounded, and a desperation for faith with which I have a great deal of sympathy—that I think of campism not just as something I disagree with, and against which I want to wag my finger, but as a set of impulses that I have quite a lot of sympathy for.

This interview was originally recorded for an episode of David Camfield’s podcast, Victor’s Children.

[fermented-writers-block]

PART 1 of 6 of the Owl Deity Hooty Theory

[NEXT PART]

[OWL DEITY HOOTY THEORY MASTERPOST] (in development)

(TLDR at bottom of post)

Over several long months of research and analysis since March of 2020, I have been following an utterly fascinating thread of potential misdirection and subtle details throughout The Owl House, and today, I would like to start weaving together of what I believe could become one of the biggest and most cleverly disguised twists in the entire show.

To begin, let’s take a look at the B plot of Understanding Willow:

On first glance, it’s an ultimately inconsequential sidestory with the sole purpose of justifying an excuse to keep Luz and Amity in Willow’s mind, as well as providing some well-needed room to breathe and release tension after the veryemotionally charged confrontation with Inner Willow. After half an episode of Eda and King outdoing the other in ridiculous ways to win Gus’ vote and Gus running off in frustration at the end of the episode from Hooty’s inane rambling, it’s easy to laugh off Gus’ pick and assume that nothing/of value was said when he closed the door for the interview.

However, if one pays close attention to that very scene, Hooty actually canstill be heard (if faintly) underneath Eda and King’s grumbling, interestingly talking about how “It all started with a hunt. Blood red skies. That’s right, I was created-.”

Now, while it may seem silly to focus on dialogue from Hooty of all characters, this A) tells us that there was an event in the past involving blood red skies and a hunt of some kind, B) that Hooty had been created close to said event, and C) implies that what he knows but can’t tell as a story worth a damn is EXTREMELY important to be included and be hidden in such a manner.

For comparison, the only other instance of dialogue being tucked away in the background in the entire show is in Wing It Like Witches:

During the lecture at the beginning of the episode, the history teacher openswith lore on Belos appointing a head witch to each coven over 50 years ago, immediately cluing in the audience to try and decipher the rest of the lecture as it moves to the background. Adding to this is how the musical sting when Luz shows off her movie obscures what he says even further, making it even more of a intriguing puzzle that the creators clearly intended for viewers to pick up on and attempt to solve.

In contrast, the hidden dialogue of Hooty’s interview is much shorter and not as hard to decipher as the teacher’s history lesson, but at the same time, there are few to no indicators whatsoever in that scene to clue in the audience to even check for something like that. It comes at the end of an episode where most viewers would have been paradoxically tired out and driven abuzz by the revelations of Amity and Willow’s relationship, doesn’t attempt to draw much attention to itself, and frames itself as a comedic subversion of audience expectations with neither the “greatest witch who ever lived” or the self-proclaimed king of demons being picked by Gus.

Instead, he picks someone that the show portrays constantly as an oblivious and gullible idiot after being described as a “state of the art defense system” at the very beginning of the series. Someone who, despite it being played for laughs, is scarily capable of casually subduing Lilith offscreen one episode and then beating her and an entire squad of Emperor’s Coven members without even the slightest change in personality or temperament.

Someone who, due to being the Owl House itself, could be considered the titular character of the entire show, yet is taken for granted by those who inhabit him and barely gets any respect from even the cutely patronized King - including when Hooty could be interpreted as having potentially been full on DEAD for a time given the use of extremely cartoony X eyes and a lack of vital signs in The Intruder.

And someone who Eda at best tolerates and at worst abandons in personal interactions and only occasionally acknowledges him when he’s actually doing his job. Yet at the same time is so implicitly trusted beyondprotecting her home to the point where - when up against the closest person Eda has to an equal outside of likely Belos - the only actually recognizable spells Eda used in combat were 1) stereotypical energy blasts, 2) a single shield spell in Covention, and 3) a noticeably large reliance on imitations of Hooty above any other spells she could have decided to use instead.

In short, the show repeatedly tells us he is just an idiotic gag character through and through, but at the same time demonstrates he has immense power through both onscreen and offscreen demonstrations, implicitly tells us his importance ahead of time through Eda’s imitations in actually serious situations, and treats his interview and origin story as - if not even more- important to keep secret than a long lore dump about how Belos’ reign works.

After all, there being only two instances of hidden background dialogue in the entire season is already intriguing on its own, but for one to get plenty of clues to draw in people’s attention and for the other to be treated as just another gag about a “mere comic relief character” - aka a good way to draw away attention and lower one’s guard - heavily suggests a far deeper significance buried under layers of misdirection, comedy, and conditioned audience expectations.

I mean, when Eda bragged about being “a bad girl living in a secret fortress,” Hooty followed with a remark about how “I’m the secret.” While that line may sound like Hooty simply being confused as part of a one-off on the surface, it’s an odd dialogue choice for the writers to pick when you think about all the other reminders of his nature as the house itself throughout the season. With the precedent these moments set, it would have been much more appropriate for him to latch onto the “fortress” side of “secret fortress” AND it would have been just as equally funny of a joke about his awareness skills, but instead, Hooty broke away from the established trend to say something that would make people suspicious were it to come from anyone else.

In a way, this reminds me much of the many subtle bits of foreshadowing strewn across the show, like Luz unknowingly describing Amity in Witches Before Wizards and Eda burning a hole through Luz’s coven type quiz that coincidentally selected the same track she had taken at Hexside as “a punky potionist.” At the time of airing, these initially seemed like one-off jokes, but eventually came back in full force several episodes later with Amity’s hidden sensitive feelings and love for the Azura books becoming clear in Lost in Language, and the reveal of Eda’s school track in Something Ventured, Someone Framed with her school misdemeanor pictures.

That said, compared to these individual bits of minor foreshadowing, the jokes about Hooty in Understanding Willow appear to simply be the most obvious pieces in a giant puzzle, implicitly and outright telling attentive viewers that there’s a major mystery to be uncovered here.

In fact, I feel bold enough to say that we could be looking at a twist on a similar scale to that of the Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz and Stanford Pines twists in Steven Universe and Gravity Falls respectively, what with this particular puzzle piece coming from how Gus wanted to make THE greatest interview of all time, and how he was looking for someone who was “interesting, accomplished, AND noteworthy:”

Note the emphasis on the ‘and’ here, as Gus had made a big deal that “people aren’t meantto be all those things” at the beginning of the episode, so as a result, stripping away all the comedic framing of his subplot leaves the intriguing implication that whoever - and, perhaps, what- Hooty is, they really are the most interesting, accomplished, AND noteworthy person out of everyone.

I could go further and talk about why I suspect the mystery surrounding King’s origins, whether true or not, is partially meant to misdirect us from paying attention to Hooty, or how the TOH crew’s could be disguising legitimate clues to his nature among made up and highly meme-able joke answers in order to proliferate said concepts throughout the fandom - thus letting us do all the dirty work of getting ourselves used to the ideas and used to dismissing them at the same time - but to bring things to a close for now, I’d like to leave you all with a question that I’ll start answering next time:

What does it mean when both the most powerful and notorious witch on the Boiling Isles and the possible actual king of demons/the Titan itself/something don’t match up to a house? And what do you think it is that makes him so special to warrant such misdirection?

TLDR: Between Eda’s golem spells, the show stressing his nature as the titular house, his implicit strength, and the odd dialogue and structure of Understanding Willow‘s subplot in relation to him, I believe I have good reason to suspect the show has been giving us many hints towards Hooty being much, much more important than it would like us to currently believe or even joke about. Particularly, through clever uses of comedy to establish and enforce a strong audience bias against looking closely at him or unironically taking him seriously, and to potentially plant the seeds for something I will start exploring in Part 2.

[undertale-data]

Closing Remarks

Feelings about the Survey

Ficus Licker: Thank you guys for taking our survey. When we started this project, it was just for fun, and I thought maybe a couple hundred or so people would take it. Receiving over 2500 responses was amazing and allowed us to view more accurate trends across the fandom. Everyone has been super nice and supportive throughout this project, including my fellow contributors. They’re great at reminding me to get sleep and not go too crazy stupid trying to do everything at once. There’s a limit to the amount of things you can do today, after all.

Vessel #1: I never expected this to get so big either. I’m just very glad for all the support we got throughout the event, both from the team, and every single one of you! It’s true that no research can be done without flaws, but this was a really good experience overall and I hope you guys liked being a part of it as much as we did.I felt like working with the team was amazing. Hell, I’m starting the Ficus Licker and Vessels [and redacted] fan club, because they’re brilliant people and it’s surprising they can still stand me. It’s like working on a group project where everyone does their part and it flows almost perfectly jsjsjs.

I’m excited to see how people react to our work, or if they motivate others to do their own events. Whatever it is, I’m rooting for all of you!

Vessel #2: Being a part of this survey has been a delight. I was technically the one who came up with the idea, but I wasn’t expecting my teammates to step up so hard and put it together so gorgeously. I think we all learned a lot about data analysis, different social media platforms, and graphic design, but for me, the biggest takeaway has been the overwhelming positivity of the fandom’s reactions. At first I was half joking about wanting to study the fandom because I thought statistics were cool, expecting this to be a niche project that a few friends responded to. Instead I was blown away by fans who were just as hyped about the data as I was. It was also the best feeling in the world to read through pages and pages of responses from all over the internet, and realize that so many different people have so much in common with me in their connections to this game. Thank you to everyone who participated, especially to my fantastic fellow Vessel and Ficus Licker, [and redacted if they would like to be credited] for turning my silly math ramblings into such a work of art. <3

Feelings about UNDERTALE

Ficus Licker: I never expected to get this deep into Undertale. I did not know anything about the game before playing it, except that there was a square robot named Mettaton, and that Sans was a meme. I only got it because it was on sale and I thought it would be a simple way to pass some time. And, well, here we are. I’m always a sucker for found family, as well as for video game mechanics influencing plot and/or lore, so it was no surprise that I ended up loving the game so much. I want a found family like the one in Undertale, even if I know that's not realistic haha.

Vessel #1: I honestly do not know what decisions led me here. Maybe it’s that when I played Undertale I was hooked. And I guess I also have a love for surveys, data and just… trying to understand people’s motivations. V2 said something about studying the fandom and I just exploded with the need to do it. Still, in general, Undertale and Deltarune meant a lot to me, they pushed me to be more creative, I found a huge community and met a lot of cool people (like FL, V2, and [redacted] even if they’re really far away). Oh! And as someone who’s terrible at video games, the game mechanics and story always made me stay determined. And that is not even mentioning the music, which is probably what motivated me to try out the games in the first place. Anyways… to cut it short, I love both the game, its story, and music and the people I’ve met because of it, thanks so much!

Vessel 2: I started playing Undertale because my friend was obsessed with it, and I’m so glad I did. The characters are all so fun and complex, and I think about them constantly. And the morals questions brought up by the game are so cool, I keep coming back to them. Still, it also manages to be a neat little game filled with friendly characters and a fabulous soundtrack. I love the depth and heartwrenching scenes, but more than that, I love that they are just… some guys. They are my some guys. Mettaton if you're out there you're doing fantastic.

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If you would like to view all of the posts on this blog in google doc format, you are welcome to do so in this google drive folder. Also, our askbox will remain open if fans have questions on collecting fandom data. We will likely not answer all questions, but if you scream into the Void, the Void may scream back.